On Friday, we had our last Indian 4-D sonogram with the unsmiling doctor and his grim, silent lady technician; we saw the little spine and the kidneys and a fleck-sized intestine; the tiny femurs, the little heartbeat, whirring like a bird, signaling the existence of another thing, a being, something me-but-not-me.
People in the US always ask what we’re having (a boy or a girl, I mean) and sometimes I can’t believe that we don’t know; we already operate on a day-to-day basis with so much uncertainty.
But, but, but: There is an old black-and-white Xeroxed sheet on the back of every examining room door at Dr. Soonawalla’s clinic, and it states – I can’t remember the language exactly – that under no circumstances will the clinic reveal the sex of all of the unborn babies that are passengering their way through his Pashmina Road clinic in the stomachs of all the glamorous, privileged, Indian ladies in the waiting room.
In the case of the Soonawalla clinic – as in many clinics, probably – I suspect this is actually untrue. Rather, it’s the Indian equivalent of the “all employees are required to wash their hands” sign. I think they would tell us, I really do, but n one has offered, no one has asked if we're curious, no one has indicated a willingness to part with the information, nothing.
In the Tardeo sonogram clinic, which is shiny and filled with blow-ups of 4-D scans and where sonograms are Rs. 4,000, the signs are laminated and replaced monthly, each one more aggressively worded than the last.
I know that I’ve written letters about this already, but: It’s this so-strange reminder that statistically, things are getting worse. That while we are here, in the middle of glamorous, woman-loving South Bombay, where the lady Vogue writer air-kisses the up-and-coming Taj Hotel corporate executive at the “hottest new club,” the lot of girls in the rest of the country remains dire. The overall sex ratio of Indian females to males fell from 946 females to 1,000 males in 1951 to 933 in 2001. In Punjab last year, the ratio was more like 793 to 1,000. To put that in context, Kerala, the country’s most literate state (90%) has a far more “natural” sex ratio of 1,058/1,000.
People in the US always ask what we’re having (a boy or a girl, I mean) and sometimes I can’t believe that we don’t know; we already operate on a day-to-day basis with so much uncertainty.
But, but, but: There is an old black-and-white Xeroxed sheet on the back of every examining room door at Dr. Soonawalla’s clinic, and it states – I can’t remember the language exactly – that under no circumstances will the clinic reveal the sex of all of the unborn babies that are passengering their way through his Pashmina Road clinic in the stomachs of all the glamorous, privileged, Indian ladies in the waiting room.
In the case of the Soonawalla clinic – as in many clinics, probably – I suspect this is actually untrue. Rather, it’s the Indian equivalent of the “all employees are required to wash their hands” sign. I think they would tell us, I really do, but n one has offered, no one has asked if we're curious, no one has indicated a willingness to part with the information, nothing.
In the Tardeo sonogram clinic, which is shiny and filled with blow-ups of 4-D scans and where sonograms are Rs. 4,000, the signs are laminated and replaced monthly, each one more aggressively worded than the last.
I know that I’ve written letters about this already, but: It’s this so-strange reminder that statistically, things are getting worse. That while we are here, in the middle of glamorous, woman-loving South Bombay, where the lady Vogue writer air-kisses the up-and-coming Taj Hotel corporate executive at the “hottest new club,” the lot of girls in the rest of the country remains dire. The overall sex ratio of Indian females to males fell from 946 females to 1,000 males in 1951 to 933 in 2001. In Punjab last year, the ratio was more like 793 to 1,000. To put that in context, Kerala, the country’s most literate state (90%) has a far more “natural” sex ratio of 1,058/1,000.
Amazing.
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