Musings on Bollywood and an Indian Pregnancy

Becoming a mother teaches you many things – about your body, about your psychology, and about your limitations and strengths as a human being in general. Interestingly, the first thing my pregnancy taught me was that Bollywood has been seriously misguiding generations of the Indian population for years and years.

Since time immemorial (i.e. 1913), Bollywood heroines/sisters/bhabi’s have been teaching the Indian audience through strong visual imagery in movie after movie that the only sure-shot method of detecting a pregnancy in the early stages is to catch a woman puking. Not a mundane pregnancy stick or an intrusive visit to the doctor or even a mother’s intuition. Every woman who ever became pregnant in Indian cinema realizes she is going to have a baby when she feels her stomach heaving and runs to the loo with a hand clamped over her mouth while a conveniently placed bystander, usually the mother-in-law or another woman (chachi) of similar age, smiles fondly and tells everyone within shouting distance that it is nothing to worry about – she is just about to become a mother! What Joy! Celebrations and songs follow – which usually continue over a flash forward of the entire 9 months of the pregnancy and sometimes the first few decades of the child’s growth. No wonder we are the most populated country in the world – we obviously believe that is how easy it is to raise a child. However, in case the story line is about an unwed mother (bin behayi maa – carries so much more weight in Hindi), then the sheer mayhem that follows the puking will curdle your blood and is usually followed by a heart wrenching glum song filmed on the poor girl crying her heart out while trudging along with a suitcase on a dark and stormy night after being thrown out of her home.

Naturally, with the Indian penchant for movies and following the age-old edict of ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’, this is the first bit of sexual education most Indian women receive, skipping the messy ‘how to get pregnant’ part and jumping straight to the rosy haze of ‘detecting impending motherhood’. Even women who have studied to the level of PhD’s and traveled the world cling to this one tried and tested truth of Indian Bollywood wisdom. Most will never awake to another reality.

Unfortunately, my pregnancy was heralded by the much lesser know symptom of bone-deep tiredness and no nausea at all. Since I am also an incredibly lazy person, it was easy for me or others not to read the signs properly. In fact, pregnancy and nausea are so strongly interlinked in the Indian mind that I had to take 3 pregnancy tests before I was convinced that I had, indeed, joined the hallowed ranks of ‘would-be mothers’.

And in case you think this is all my imagination and general lack of general knowledge, I would like to share the most hilarious of the many examples of how women were cruelly misled by the most revered institution of our country. A couple called their family in sheer ecstasy on the fourth day of their 7-day honeymoon to claim that they were pregnant as the wife had been puking her guts out the whole day. It was only when she was taken to the doctor that a strong case of food poisoning was diagnosed and the hopes of an entire clan were dashed.

Another ‘geriatric’ mother I met in the waiting room at the physician’s told me how she actually went to the doctor and asked him to perform a test for jaundice on her because she was sure she was mimicking the same symptoms, viz. extreme fatigue, from the last time she contracted the disease. The test was negative and the doctor asked her to take a pregnancy test instead to cover all bases. She laughed hilariously at this, until she saw that thin blue line. Her second statement to the doctor, after the first flabbergasted ‘How could this happen?’, was ‘But I am not nauseous at all!’

The bitter lesson learnt from all this was to take everything Bollywood tells you with a pinch of salt. It may be the truth, but may not be the entire truth. Therefore, may be Sanjay Dutt was not so innocent after all. Maybe not all children who are separated in the Kumbh Ka Mela wear identical medallions and will thus not be reunited with their families eventually. And maybe, horror of all horrors, there are no such things as itchadhari nagins after all. It is heartbreaking, but we all do need to grow up sometime.