Mrs Mani

Sometimes there is a collision between the visible and the hidden: between the rational and the mystical: between the plausible and the unexplainable. The common belief in India is that after death souls migrate looking for a portal into their next incarnation. Were my thoughts merely a coincidence, or tricks of my imagination, or? 

One morning a few years ago I was going through some notes and came across an anecdote that was to be the beginning of a story about Mrs. Mani, the wife of our cook in Kolar. I had begun several times but left the story unfinished. However, I felt an urge just then to take it up again. Memories came, of our bungalow in the New Extension, of her, her curries, her easy laugh, and her children. 

As I was writing, my inbox signaled the arrival of a message with the title "Sad News”. Mike said that Mrs. Mani had died a few hours earlier. Were my thoughts and memories or the sensation that she was present for a brief moment nothing more than coincidence, or was it a form of leave-taking: a symbiosis between the past and present? India is a place where the paranormal is normal. I told a friend that I was writing about Mrs. Mani around the time she died. My friend said with conviction "it wasn't a coincidence, everything and everyone are connected”.

I had carried around a feeling of guilt for having intervened in the lives of the Manis. As Peace Corps Volunteers we were taught to bring change through our work and advised not to intervene culturally, but training was one thing and reality another. Towards the end of Mrs. Mani's eighth pregnancy, I suggested to Mani that they should consider sterilization to protect her health.

I realized that I couldn't ask Mani to be sterilized. Sterilization in India's patriarchal society was unthinkable for a man, so it was arranged that Mrs. Mani would have the procedure in conjunction with her delivery. She was not yet thirty years old, looked dangerously worn and seemed to be dragging herself through her current pregnancy. I was afraid that another child would be fatal or seriously debilitating. I had seen my mother deteriorate and weaken after eight children and there were similarities.

At the time the Indian population was increasing by an alarming one million a month and there was wide spread propaganda for family planning. There were posters in the markets, bus stations, cinemas and many public places and the government was offering cash or material incentives to men or women who underwent sterilization. 

Mani agreed easily. Perhaps in part because he understood the danger that his wife would be subjected to during future pregnancies, and in part because I was his employer and my opinions carried extra weight.

 It wasn't until I met the Manis in Kolar again many years later that the regret that I had for having interfered in their private life was put to rest. All of their children, seven girls, and one boy were settled in life, healthy and with children of their own. Judging by her smile and warmth, I had a tangible feeling, unspoken but clear, that she said "Thank-you. You did the right thing."