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9.9
Ashwini Arrives
Six Weeks in Private Room No. 3
First Child, First Fever
The birth of a child is always a big event, but the first one turns the entire household into a state of alert. Every small symptom becomes a headline. Every day feels important. When Bhavana was pregnant with our first child, Ashwini, I lived in that peculiar mixture of excitement and nervousness that only first-time parents understand. We were happy, of course, but we were also watchful—listening to every new complaint, reading meaning into every silence.
Bhavana fell pregnant while she was preparing for her B.Ed. examinations. The due date was inconveniently close—barely two weeks before her exams—because life rarely checks our schedules before making its plans. The first trimester went smoothly, except for mild morning sickness, which she handled without drama. In those days there were no routine ultrasounds, no colourful scans to reassure you, no reports with neat measurements. We depended on clinical judgement, experience, and the steady confidence of our obstetrician, Dr Shakuntala Chhabra.
Dr Shakuntala Chhabra
Dr Chhabra was thirty-seven then, petite and youthful-looking, the kind of doctor who could be mistaken for a medical student until she began speaking. She spoke fast, moved briskly, and seemed powered by an internal motor that never needed rest. Her energy filled the ward. She had that rare ability to make patients feel that everything was under control—even when it wasn’t.
Over time, she and I developed a warm professional rapport. She would call me for advice when medical complications appeared in her practice, and I admired the way she handled obstetrics with both confidence and care. She was serious about her work, but she wasn’t solemn. She brought lightness into a space where families often carried fear.
Private Room No. 3
In Bhavana’s second trimester, she began having episodes of preterm labour. Dr Chhabra advised absolute bed rest in the hospital. That is how Bhavana landed in Private Room No. 3 at Kasturba Hospital, and stayed there for weeks. It was a long admission, the kind that tests patience, stamina, and the ability to find meaning in small routines.
I spent most of my spare time with her. I brought meals, sat beside her bed, tried to look calm, and pretended that everything was normal. It wasn’t. But Bhavana, even then, had that steady core. She accepted the situation without melodrama. She worried, naturally, but she did not collapse into panic.
The Waiting Game
As the expected date approached, Bhavana’s fetal kicks began to feel less vigorous. Then she went “post-date,” which in obstetrics is never a phrase that brings comfort. She was admitted to the labour room, and Dr Chhabra was determined—stubbornly, lovingly determined—that Bhavana would deliver vaginally.
Bhavana endured the long hours with the quiet endurance she is capable of when she has no choice. Dr Chhabra coaxed, encouraged, reassured, and used oxytocin, but Bhavana’s uterus refused to cooperate. Labour stretched on, and time began to feel heavy. After thirty-six hours, Dr Chhabra recommended a caesarean section and rushed to her quarters to freshen up, as if she were preparing for a decisive battle.
Thirty-Six Hours
Then came one of those moments that remind you how quickly medicine can change its mind when the body changes its plan. When Dr Chhabra returned, she reassessed Bhavana, looked at the situation afresh, and decided to make one more attempt. The nurses were instructed to prepare for a vaginal delivery. The labour room shifted gears instantly—quiet urgency, purposeful movements, everyone doing their part without fuss.
Bhavana pushed with everything she had left. A few intense moments later, we heard it—the first cry. A thin, fierce announcement that a new person had entered the world.
Ashwini.
Dr Chhabra’s face broke into a broad, beaming smile. She looked triumphant, not for herself, but for Bhavana. I stood there overwhelmed—relieved, grateful, slightly stunned—watching the drama of thirty-six hours resolve into a single sound.
3:30 p.m., 18 March 1986
Ashwini was born on 18 March 1986 at 3:30 in the afternoon. When I held him for the first time, I felt the kind of wonder that makes even a doctor feel unqualified. He was small, warm, perfect in the way newborns seem perfect—tiny fingers curled like question marks, toes that looked too delicate for the world.
Bhavana, after thirty-six hours of labour, was exhausted in the most complete way possible. Yet she could not stop smiling. It was as if the pain had been erased by a single, sudden certainty: he is here. I watched her face, and I realised that childbirth does something extraordinary. It empties you, and then it fills you.
Poems in the Ward
Bhavana had spent almost six weeks in the private ward by the time Ashwini arrived. Those weeks were not easy, but they were strangely tender. I tried to keep her spirits up in the only way I knew that felt personal: I wrote poems for her—short, rhyming, four-line verses. The residents from Obstetrics and Gynaecology began dropping in daily, not just to check on Bhavana, but to ask, with a smile, “Today’s poem?”
It became our small ritual. A private joke, a shared distraction, a way of pretending that the hospital room was not merely a place of waiting but also a place where life was quietly preparing to begin.
Afterwards
When I look back now, what I remember most is not the anxiety, though there was plenty of it. I remember the anticipation that filled the air, the long days in Private Room No. 3, the calm competence of Dr Shakuntala Chhabra, and the moment Ashwini cried for the first time. It was joy, yes—but it was also relief, gratitude, and a new kind of love that arrived without warning and stayed.
Those weeks changed us. They made us parents. They made us older overnight. And they gave us a memory that still feels bright, even after all these years.