Dear Reader,
With astrology so popular in mainstream culture, I want to share with you a story that explores the question of how astrology works. I wrote this fiction/short story exercise for my writing critique group, but I have also seen at least one or two versions of this play out in people’s lives. Whenever I’ve connected seemingly implausible dots, it has felt as though a powerful, invisible force is standing right next to me. Though I can’t be hundred percent sure it’s really there or if it’s just a product of my imagination.
The story is set in the 1970’s.
You don’t need to believe in astrology to read the story.
Each time Sunita held her daughter’s swaddled body, she felt a little more at peace with her new role of mother. Her day-old daughter’s eyes were closed, her lips pursed, and her fists clenched. After the doctor left, Meena, the midwife, had declared she’d never seen a baby so obviously resemble her mother. The same sharp nose. The thick, shiny hair. She ought to know about babies, Meena added, her deft hands continuing their simultaneous work of cleaning up mother and child. After all, she, Meena, had been in the pregnancy and delivery business for more than two decades. More, if you counted the years before she’d received formal training. “Didn’t you say you were a teacher? Why, with an educated mother like you, your baby girl might grow up to be a doctor! An accomplished woman just like her mother!” Sunita tried to cover up her sudden distress by nodding in agreement and plastering an extra-wide smile on her face.
The midwife was right about one thing, the new mother thought now, this was her daughter. Sunita’s hand hovered in the air for a few moments before coming to rest very gently around the baby’s head. It fit like a ball in her cupped palm, exactly the right size, as though they were a matched pair. Maybe the baby sensed her mother’s exhilaration, because she shifted within the swaddle cloth, her small fists opening and closing. When small creases appeared on the baby’s forehead, the mother ran a light finger over them, smoothing the delicate skin.
♠️
The new father, Ram, returned in the afternoon, and when he stepped around the curtain, he saw both mother and child were asleep. He stood next to the bed, hovering over the baby, staring at her face, and trying to find some reflection of himself in her face before giving up. His wife looked tired, and he was glad he had brought her fresh, hot food from home. He glanced at the other three beds of the semi-private hospital ward. His parents had scolded him for the extra expense, and more so after the baby was born, but he’d wanted to spare his wife the chaos of the larger general ward. Only one other bed, the last one against the opposite wall, was occupied. An older woman sat on a chair near the window at the head of the bed, holding a baby. A middle-aged couple stood nearby, talking to the young woman in a white hospital gown lying on the bed. All four turned to look at him, but he studiously ignored their gaze as he set down his bag and pulled the curtain stand divider, arranging it between his wife’s hospital bed and the rest of the ward. It was a partial screen at best, but it was better than nothing. He turned back to look at his wife and new daughter, but they continued to sleep despite the noise he made dragging the metal stand. Someone had placed a long bolster next to the baby, protecting her from rolling away and tucking her, in her snug cloth nest, into the curve of her mother's body. The two looked comfortable, complete even, a new unit that excluded him. What if he replaced the bolster with his own body, enclosing the baby within a protective circle formed by her parents? He banished the rogue thought, and the longing that accompanied it, almost immediately. After all, as his mother continually reminded him, this was a woman’s business, nothing to do with him. "You don’t need to stay for long in the hospital,” his mother told him. “Since her mother cannot travel, it has fallen to us to care for her. Give her the food and tell her I’ll be along after I finish the housework.”
As he prepared to leave for the hospital, eager to see his wife, his father spoke, his eyes still on his newspaper. “You have a daughter now. Alright. Good. But, tell your wife she has to try harder next time.” Ram nodded obediently and asked if he could take the day’s newspaper, if his father had finished reading, to his wife.
♠️
A loud clattering sound woke Sunita. She saw her husband and smiled before she remembered her anger at him. Ignoring his outstretched hands, she pushed herself upright with effort and leaned against the back of the hospital bed. Her movements woke the baby, who started to cry. She saw Ram bend to lift the baby, but she quickly snatched her daughter up, and the baby quieted.
Ram spoke in a lowered voice. “I moved the screen in case it’s time to feed the baby.”
“Not yet,” Sunita answered. She could feel him willing her to look up at him, but she pretended to be absorbed in examining the baby’s toes.
“I brought your lunch.” He placed the lunch bag on the small metal stand and sat on the chair near her bed, but she refused to meet his eyes.
“Father looked at her birth chart,” he offered just when she thought he was about to give up and leave.
“I already know her future.” Sunita snapped. “She’s going to be so highly educated, a doctor or a lawyer, and superstition will have no place in her life.”
“Astrology isn’t superstition,” Ram said, parroting something she’d often heard her father-in-law say.
“When we married and I moved to this city, I thought you and your parents would be more modern. But all of you,” Sunita said, “are more old-fashioned and traditional than my 80-year-old grandmother who has never left her village.”
Ram looked at the ward beyond the screen before leaning closer to the bed and whispering to her. “I know you are angry because we want you to stop working. Even though you know Ma will soon be unable to manage the household without your help.”
“Ram, listen to me. I can help her and I can continue teaching.” Sunita pleaded
“And what about the baby? Who will take care of her?” Ram asked, sitting back in his chair with a tired sigh.
Sunita knew it was a rhetorical question, but she tried again anyway. “I’ll do all of it. I can manage everything, but please, Ram, let me continue teaching at the school. Going there and seeing the eager faces of the children...and I like feeling independent. Being accomplished.”
Ram stood up. “Can't you feel the same by being with our daughter? And, you know I can take care of my family’s financial needs. All I’m asking is for you to remember your part of the responsibilities. Now, come, eat your lunch. I'll hold her.”
He got up, put the bag with the lunch on the bed, and extended his arms to receive the baby.
“No.”
“No?”
“No, no, no! I am not hungry. And, I don’t want you to hold my baby.” She didn’t realize she’d shouted her response and that in her anger, she’d flung out an arm and pushed the lunch bag off the bed. Only when she saw the fury on his face did she register the scattered rice and the spilled dal on the floor, and the rapt audience made up of the family beyond the curtain screen.
Ram immediately squatted and, taking out a newspaper from the bag, began to clean the spilled food.
“When Father read…your daughter’s birth chart, he saw wealth and wisdom. But, you know what else he saw?”
“What?” Sunita asked, despite not wanting to.
Ram continued with the cleanup, his movements jerky and his chest heaving, “He said she won't have any attachment to her mother. That the connection between the mother and daughter - you and her- is cut. She won’t care about you, at least not how a daughter usually cares about her mother. She’ll be cold and reserved with you.”
“You’re just making it up to hurt me,” Sunita responded hotly.
“Am I?” Ram smiled. “If you don’t need me for anything, I’ll take your leave. Mother will be here to help you with the baby later.”
After he left, Sunita lay on her side, her body instinctively curved around the baby again. To anyone watching, she seemed like any new mother, watching tenderly over her sleeping baby. She was hungry now, almost ravenous. She thought longingly of the hot rice mixed with dal and wondered what other food her mother-in-law had sent. Ram had taken the lunch bag back with him. She traced a finger over the baby’s thick eyebrows and whispered half-jokingly, “The minute you arrive, I have to go without food. Is this how a daughter cares for her mother? Are you creating trouble for your mother already? Look at you sleeping peacefully oblivious to my suffering!” She frowned at the baby and then laughed nervously at her own silliness. Obviously it wasn’t the baby’s fault her mother didn’t have any lunch. How was a tiny baby capable of reservation and coldness anyway? And to her mother? Sunita tried to dismiss the questions buzzing in her head like angry bees, but they continued to plague her. She shifted onto her back though the movement was painful. She checked to make sure the bolster was still in place and kept the baby safe. Sunita turned to her other side, presenting her back to the baby.
Thank you to my critique group for the fantastic feedback and advice, and to you, dear Reader, for reading. I’d love to hear what this story brought up for you. To me, it feels like you can tell how the story will play out from this moment on and I can stop right here. I do have a short part two, but I am going to share it next week only if you feel it’s necessary. Can you tell what’s going to happen?
Best,
Priya
Oh, so very mysterious, Priya! Not sure if you were sending we readers a signal when you said the baby lay 'in a reserved' manner, or something to that effect. I'll have to think on this on.
Vedic Astrologers are morally constrained from making negative predictions about futures. Long-held traditions in Indian Hindu Culture have held women as inferior and supposed to obey the wishes of the husband. A son is desired. A daughter must be married off with a dowry in order to have a secure future. The reading of this daughter's birth chart like this was cruel and unnecessary. Very disturbing story. Part 2? Hope there's a good twist.