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Joined at Birth By- Sunanda Vashisht I was born in the beautiful valley of Kashmir,India when Kashmir was known for its unparalleled natural beauty and not as a cauldron of fear and terror. I did most of my schooling in Delhi and dabbled with several professions before moving to U.S last year.I am currently pursuing higher studies here. I like to introduce myself as an explorer because I want to spend all my time in this world exploring unknown. Writing for me is a cathartic experience.I can't remember when I began writing first but I do know that writing has always helped me to be at peace with myself and with the world around me.

The incident was no less than a calamity for Karuna. Faced with the extreme circumstances she felt completely lost and stricken with grief. She looked around to find some familiar faces. Her husband, mother-in-law and her sister-in-law stood around her but none of those faces she could call familiar. They were all known faces but they didn’t seem to belong to her. She seemed to be the only one who was faced with the strange and tragic predicament. Everybody else seemed to have made up his or her mind pretty quickly.

""Karuna what do you say, we have very little time and every second is crucial"", Suresh softly whispered in her ear.
""What are you asking her, Suresh? There is no choice. We must get rid of the girl before the world comes to know that your wife has given birth to a monster and not a child"". Her mother-in-law said in not so kind tone.
Karuna understood this tone; she was accustomed to this and had borne it for a long time. Trying to ignore everything and everybody else, she looked at Suresh. Her eyes betrayed excruciating pain. She could not give any words to her pain and wanted Suresh to understand, somehow. He had never understood, and did not comprehend now either.
""Suresh, can I see my child just once, she muttered softly?
You won’t bear to see it. It is truly""
His mother cut him short.
""It is not a child but a monster. Dayyan ke pet se aur paida bhi kya hota. It is our bad luck that we have to bear you. I don’t blame you. It is my bad luck that I should have got my only son married to you"".

""Mother, please keep quiet, this is no time and no place for such a conversation"", Suresh told his mother.

The nurse signaled them to keep quiet. Other patients in that hospital ward were looking at them. Suresh felt embarrassed. Karuna was oblivious to her surrounding. She could not feel the pain of her childbirth. As soon as she had regained consciousness after 6 hour long cesarean operation, her husband informed her that she had given birth to twins who were joined at birth. Karuna had heard about Siamese twins but didn’t know that one-day she will mother one of them. Suresh had told her that twins were a boy and a girl and they shared certain vital organs like a kidney and a leg. An operation would have to be performed immediately and only one child could be saved.
The doctor had told them that the girl had better chances of survival but Suresh and his mother wanted the boy to survive

""A disabled boy is better than a whole girl"", her mother-in-law had said simply and categorically.

Suresh wanted Karuna to give her approval but she was dumbfounded. If the girl had better chances of survival then shouldn’t we save her, had been an obvious question in her mind. She knew that there was no point in voicing her opinion. It would not be heard and she would feel worse. That had been the case for last five years of her married life.

Karuna had been the only daughter of a poor schoolteacher. She was the fifth child and her mother died in the childbirth. The stigma of being unfortunate had stuck to Karuna from the first day she had been born. She had been ostracized for being responsible for her mother’s death. Little Karuna never knew for years the upheaval her birth had caused. Her father had been left alone to bear the burden of four sons and karuna. She was small -- 5ft, and looked emaciated, which was the normal appearance of women in her section of society. She had permanent dark patches around her eyes, which gave her face a sort of glow -- not one that generates reverence, like a saint's does, but one that generates sympathy and causes a kind-hearted person to wish she were better off. The kind-hearted person would also know, probably through that same glow, that she would never be. She was weak from not being able to eat well, either in her husband's house or in her parent's house before her marriage. She was weak as a child too, having been born to a weak mother, who was weak from not eating well, either in her husband's house or in her parent's house before her marriage.

Karuna had managed to complete her basic schooling because her father was a schoolmaster and he did not have to pay a tuition fee for her. Karuna had been a bright student with a knack to grasp things quickly. She had wanted to study further but her father could not afford to pay the college tuition fee nor would he send her to college, which was about 20 miles away from home, alone. Her brothers were nevertheless sent to college but each one of them had to drop out either due to financial constraints or due to their own disinterest. It never occurred to Karuna’s father that Karuna had better chances of doing well in school, since she was the brightest of all his children. He was worried that he should be able to marry her off somehow before he died not because he wanted her to be settled but because he had heard that in hindu dharma if you die without doing the kanyadaan of your daughter you had very few chances of going to heaven. Her father logically did not want to experience hell after life too. So he made a frantic search, not for the suitable groom for his 17-year-old daughter but for any groom who would agree to marry his daughter without asking for any dowry

Soon, Suresh’s mother had come to ask his daughter’s hand for her only son. They were a little better off than he was and Suresh was the only son. The schoolmaster chose to overlook a lot of other things for example Suresh walked with a limp, and also was twice Karuna’s age. The fact that Suresh’s mother was asking for no dowry was more than what the schoolmaster could ask for. Karuna would manage to live with a little limp of her husband and his very obvious ugly face. He was so happy with the proposal that he didn’t want to meet Suresh even once had it not been for the insistence of Suresh’s mother. That Karuna should meet Suresh or she should even be informed of it, was not thought to be important by either party. So one-day Karuna got married. For Karuna her marriage procession could as well have been her funeral procession. It didn’t matter to her. The funeral procession of a living human being, which would continue to move for a long time till death chose to rescue her. Karuna lived like a dead person. Till she was told that her daughter who had better chances of survival would be killed to save her brother because he was a son. And at that moment in the hospital ward, Karuna wanted to voice her opinion. She should save her daughter. But then she argued that her disabled son would have a better life that his sister. She did not want to bring another Karuna in this world so that she could languish behind closed doors and lead an emaciated life. No, she told herself. The girl should die now before she even could experience any pain. However Karuna could have saved herself all the arguments. She was not asked and the baby girl was killed to save the boy.

When Karuna was finally told that she could go home with her disabled son, she broke down. A disabled son, and a disabled husband, but both better off than whole Karuna.

So Karuna spent rest of her years nursing her half husband and her half son till one day the son died. Karuna could not bear any more children because she was too weak to.
Suresh’s mother was too unhappy and held Karuna responsible for everything. Suresh of course was too busy worrying about his disabilities and the fact that Karuna could not bear children anymore. The mother and son were worried about their future generations.

One bright morning Suresh’s mother set out to look for another girl for her son. Some other schoolteacher who was too eager to get rid of his daughter and do the customary kanyadaan. Some other schoolteacher who would overlook her son’s disabilities, which had multiplied with time and of course, she chose not to disclose that her son was already married. She was using extra precautions, but even if she had disclosed that her son was married, she would have still found a schoolteacher eager to donate his daughter and do the customary kanyadaan.

Soon she found another Karuna who hopefully would bear whole children for the continuance of her family name.
Karuna of course languished in dark till she could bear no more. Soon Suresh hit upon a clever idea. With little help from the local doctor he was able to procure the certificate for Karuna’s insanity and soon Karuna was packed off to a mental asylum with the stigma of being insane.
However, Karuna had finally found a refuge. She didn’t mind being branded insane because in the asylum she got her two square meal without asking for it and she had other Karunas for companionship.
The mental asylum suited Karuna and her other friends more than the world outside.

Credits

• Graphic by Suruchi Thakur.

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