Fruits of Labour

Fruits of Labour

`Vairagya’ is a Sanskrit word with a deep sense and connotation, whose shallow English equivalent is `to renunciate’. The lore of Indian culture stresses on some occasion-driven `vairagya’ - surges of diffidence, futility and self-questioning which most people encounter, but soon get over.

 ‘Devaalaya vairagya” is a  surge to seek oneness with the Almighty that overtakes a devotee’s mind while praying before the Temple deity. `Smashaana vairagya’, encountered at the cremation grounds where, standing beside the funeral pyre, the thought occurs that if this is the way it is all going to end, the rat race of life appears wholly futile. Yet a few days later, the despondency shakes off and its back the stress-filled routines. A third is, `prasooti vairagya’ is the experience by a woman who has undergone the pangs of child-birth. The resolve to never again go through the agony is overcome in time, though may not necessarily for reasons of her choosing.

The momentous event of childbirth impacts so many peoples at once – its parents, grandparents, the larger family. While the expectant mother undergoes her agonies and ecstasies within the sanctity of the labour room, a circus of emotions ranging from joy to disappointment and on to elation or anguish are on a grand visual display outside. Presiding over the proceedings in these rather hallowed corners of every large hospital are people like Godavaribai, affectionately called Godabai, the Matron Nurse at Pune’s General Hospital.

There is considerable officialdom at General Hospitals – doctors of various positional denominations, nurses likewise, ward boys, conservancy and other support staff. They have their inter-personal relations and adjustments problems. It is people like Godabai around who the entire functioning of a department revolve and to who even the senior -most doctor is deferential.  Besides providing continuity, she was a storehouse of knowledge and experience on complications and procedures not covered in any textbook. Godabai had an all-pervading presence, She minutely oversaw the various requirements – cleanliness, supplies and stores, patient comfort, ensured that other staff was on their toes. She seemed to be there all the time, at every bedside where need arose and her patient reassurance to anxious relatives calmed so many minds. No picture of that labour room at that time could be visualised without Godabai in the centre of it.  

 Few were aware that she herself had a child - a daughter who she ensured received all the time her mother could devote to her care and upbringing. Her immense experience prompted her on where to be at which moment – home or hospital and she was invariably there at the time of need.

A general hospital labour room is quite akin to a railway station. Action never ceases and the large old-time bench in the foyer outside provided a vantage point to observe the circus of activity and emotion. There may be no chai or pakodawalla, but the permeating sense of expectation is just as on a platform, with the moment of arrival setting off a sequence of interesting responses.

 Godabai was able to read the thoughts in each mind and knew the anxieties and concerns that brewed within. She was harsh on those who she thought had failed in their family responsibilities. `Would you have kept your own daughter as poorly fed?’ was not uncommon. But what took her to a frenzy of uncontrolled admonishment was when a patient was brought in late. `What were you doing – sleeping?’ `Did you go as leisurely for your own delivery?’ she barked out at tense mothers and mothers-in-law, her usual targets.

Not many knew the reasons for her extraordinary commitment and concern. It was a casual visit by an old maid which revealed that just as Godabai was being brought in for her own delivery, in the dark of a night on a tonga, the jerky ride triggered convulsions. She gave birth to her daughter by the roadside, with no assistance at all, overseen by husband and the tongawalla, both of who knew nothing at all of what was to be done.

 Mother and child survived and were brought to the hospital in a precarious state. Both took a long time to recover normalcy.

 It was the mother in her and her own experience of the consequences of delay which made her go into an uncontrolled frenzy to chide the erring adults when a mother-to-be was brought to the hospital just in the nick of time.

Work for Godabai was worship and scores of happy couples had the benefit of her unsolicited yet worthy advice. Generations of budding doctors were wiser by the wealth of practical experience and narration of uncommon cases she freely related to them.  As her own child grew, she began to see her daughter in her lady students and her students in her daughter. The twain did meet when her daughter, groomed on the focussed care and upbringing her mother besides blessings of so many grateful people, qualified to be a Medical Student herself.

In the flow of life, time and distance, memories of earlier togetherness come to wither. Godabai did not come to mind for a long while until news reached that she had passed away - at the ripe age of eighty-two. Her demise brought back memories of her unsung service to humanity to all who knew her.  

 Godabai’s death occurred in Austin, Texas in the sprawling luxury of the home of her adoring doctor daughter and son-in-law, who with their children, were by her side in her last moments.

For one who had stood over so many deliveries, the fruits of her own labour were indeed sweet.