I dreamt of a brown hand pushing the small of my back, making me fly down a flight of stairs. When I woke up the only stairs I could think of were hospital stairs. Stairs that wind past paan stained corners, leading into sunny balconies that they lock us into. We squat along the wall, and a kindly woman in a burkha, Shaheen, smiles up at my green face. Meri beti, she says, pointing to the door.
They dump Preeti's drugged-out body onto a bed with wheels, banging it into every wall, every hard surface they can find. I stood trapped in a lift, staring at her unfocused eyes, squirming under the hot gaze of the hospital staff. Chai paani ka kuch dedo they say. My face reddens with anger. I stare back, pretending not to understand. They look uncomfortable, and leave. I blink in my peculiar victory, and watch Shaheen in the corridor dig into her purse for twenty rupees, her bus fare home. Her daughter is wheeled up and laid down next to Preeti. Her thin legs are crisscrossed with thick hairs, eyes wild with anasthesia. Her mother smiles down at her and makes her wear her pyjamas. I dutifully wriggle Preeti's petticoat onto her.
When Preeti surfaces from the depths of her anaesthetised sleep she murmurs in my ear asking me if I'd eaten my lunch.
When they made her change she didn't want to take off her bangles, embarassed that she seemed to be losing, in one fell swoop, all the markers of her identity: womb, bangles, nose pins. I smiled and shrugged at her, and bit my tongue, wondering whether we're really all equal in hospital gowns. The green robe another nurse wanted me to pay ten rupees for hung together by threads and smelt of rancid blood and a wet dog. I folded Preeti's sari carefully into my backpack: it smelt faintly of urine, a smell that is absorbed into your pores when there is a baby around.They wanted to know who I was, and she smiled and said simply, meri bhen. I shifted awkwardly and nodded. I sat outside waiting for two-thirty, playing with her squint-eyed unnamed baby and younger son, Pappu. A familiar smile held onto my arm and we waited together in the sun, listening for the snip-snap of tubes being cut. She shook her head sadly thinking about her sister's defective womb. 1,2,3,4,5,6,7. 7 daughters. She counted them off like they were warts, alien objects waiting to be disposed of. One was given away, the rest were still around: time bombs waiting to go off. She left, looking for a free lunch for her niece.
The canteen served me hot tea in plastic glasses and I grumbled about poisons leeching into my drink . The manager told me it was first grade plastic, and his pet langur grinned at me.
