A transitioning journey from being a victim as well as a witness to sex-selection procedures to becoming a vocal advocate against them, Dr. Aruna Kalra, a leading obstetrician and gynecologist, unveils an impactful book, ‘I Want a Boy’ (Vitasta Publications), highlighting India's strong and ongoing obsession with male children exploring the pressures and sacrifices women face to fulfill this desire.
 
Through real-life stories from her practice, Dr. Kalra reveals the heartbreaking complications of pregnancies, selective abortions, and cultural norms. These practices, which families pursue across all social boundaries, often reduce women’s self-worth, freedom, and overall well-being.

The book serves as a powerful call for societal change, advocating for greater empathy towards women's health and rights amidst an estimated 4-12 million female fetuses aborted in the last thirty years.

This powerful book, peppered with personal anecdotes, is also a commentary on the repeated pregnancies, selective abortions, and outdated rituals for a boy baby that our society endorses, all of which strip women of their self-respect, autonomy, and well-being.

Here is an excerpt from the book:

ANOTHER DAY dawned, shattered the routine.

‘She killed her baby! Doctor, come quick!’

A lady in the bathroom had killed her newborn, throttled her to death. We were shocked. Everyone jumped on their toes and rushed towards the toilet.

This was nothing new. The ladies who had been delivering babies every year were way too experienced about all this delivery business. They very well knew ‘that push’ that got the baby out. They were audacious enough to check the gender of the newborn just then. If it was a girl, they sometimes strangulated her then and there with their bare hands, right in front of the doctors, nurses or the aayas.

We peered inside the filthy toilet. Two aayas were trying to pull her out, the umbilical cord and placenta still attached to her womb and hanging from the vagina. The nurse separated the tiny, dead newborn girl from the cord.

The lady was stone-faced, with no visible regret or remorse on her face. She rather looked content after a war which had just ended, with destruction and pain all around. But she was still happy that she had saved herself. She was guilty of delivering a girl child, a grave sin, but she corrected it instantaneously. She fed her with her blood for nine months, she owned the life of that tiny being, so it was her right to take that away, she thought.

For some seconds, after the birth of the girl child, the mother could envision the cascade of events—an unwanted, unwelcomed child, abused, neglected, unloved throughout her life, transformed into a child-producing factory after being married off at a very young age. Yes, this was the horror story of her life.

After some conscious deliberation, she took a decision todeliver it secretly. If the newborn was a boy, she would shout for help, if it was a girl, she would kill her in the immediate moment and be relieved.

She was brought back to the ward, cleaned and covered. Her relatives were called to hand over the dead daughter. No one mourned, no one came near the mother with empathy. I was quite sure that they were the driving force for her action.

I had to go back to the OPD. It was past ten, and I was already late. I rushed past many colleagues. Waving to everyone, greeting seniors, I noticed Dr Seema, smiling to herself outside the sonography room.

‘Hey Seema, is there good news?’

‘Yes!’ She turned towards me, grinning from ear to ear. ‘Congratulations,’ Isaid, and passed by her hastily without waiting for an answer.

She has two daughters, and now she is pregnant again. She might be wanting a son this time, I assumed. She must have gone for gender confirmation too. But why am I thinking all this, I thought to myself while walking away. I tried to rebuke myself and flush these thoughts out of my mind. This boy and girl business seemed to cloud my mind as well.

The OPD was brimming with patients. How many ofthem were mothers who wanted to kill their daughters, and how many of them were mothers who were dying to have daughters, begging God for a chance to conceive?

If I were God, my earth would have been devoid of sorrow, I thought, as I sighed. The humans would get what they wanted; harmony and love would reign everywhere. If I were Him, I would empower all girls with education, self-respect, employment. I would empower every family with ideas about gender equality.

I turned to the woman who had approached me to talk about her disease.

‘Rani,’ I said, observing her file.

She leaned over me and said it was a very confidential matter and looked down at her feet.

‘I am not able to have children,’ she said, with a tinge of sadness.

‘That’s not a big issue,Rani. We get such cases and there are solutions,’ I assured her.

‘Doctor, I have been to every hospital, but there has been no hope. Please give me a child, otherwise my in-laws will provoke my husband to remarry.’

She was sobbing now.

‘Please hand over your previous reports and treatment details,’ I said rather curtly.

She scooped out old, dusty papers and tattered slips from several government hospitals. Her dirty plastic bag was full of multiple test reports, laceratedX-ray films and numerous files. Searching through the pile, arranging them all neatly, year wise, I discovered her husband’s semen report. It said Azoospermia.

‘Rani, your husband has no sperm. However, you seem tobe perfectly alright, all your test reports are normal, showing good fertility index and patent fallopian tubes. But the problem is with your husband, so stop running from pillar to post undergoing painful tests every few months.’

‘Do you know that HSG (Hysterosalpingography) is a very painful test?’I asked.

‘Yes, I am aware of it,’ she replied quietly.

‘And do you know that Azoospermia has no treatment other than borrowing donor (someone else’s)sperms?’I asked again.

‘Yes, I know that too!’ she replied.

‘In that case, did you undergo IUI (IntraUterineInsemination) with donor sperm?’

‘No doctor, my in-laws don’t believe in that. They think it is sinful to even think of it! Trying to have a baby with another man’s sperm is like adultery. I am helpless, doctor. The problem lies in him, still I am to be blamed for being barren.’

She started pleading now with her hands folded in prayer. ‘Doctor, please do this IUI secretly. Once I am pregnant, all mouths will be shut. It’s been fourteen years since my marriage and still I have not got acceptance from his family. I am living like a slave in that house, slogging from dawn till late night, doing every household chore, mopping, cleaning, cooking, washing clothes for all their family members. I am dependent on their mercy to get food and shelter for myself. My husband abuses me, he forces me to sleep with him and do unnatural acts of sex. I am living a life of humiliation every single day. Please doctor, arrange for this artificial insemination donor secretly for me. I will be indebted to you for life.’

I was shaken. Her plight seemed genuine. But still, helping her was illegal and hence, not possible. Without her husband’s consent, impregnating her with donor sperm, was legally wrong.

I wanted to help her badly. Her vulnerability, her inability to conceive a child despite simple measures available to change her fate moved me. But my rational brain calculated the risks and I looked at her remorsefully.

‘I am very sorry, Rani. I wish I could help you,’ I said.

Impatient with my silence, she got up, collected her fate wrapped in ripped, soiled, fragile slips and went away from the OPD room.

Stop her, don’t let her go. Whom will she go to? Where will I find her if I change my mind and think of doing something beyond the law, simply on the grounds of mercy? I heard a voice within me shouting at my ineptitude.

[The excerpt reproduced with the permission of the publishers.]