As I write this I am finishing watching Julie (a 1975 hit Bollywood movie). It's still playing in the background. Just to give you a gist of the movie — Julie, an Anglo-Indian girl is impregnated by her Hindu boyfriend. Very soon Julie will be an unwed mother in the movie!

I’ve watched several movies like this. Especially Bollywood. And have seen girls getting pregnant so easily like it's a cakewalk. Even a molestation attempt by a man she likes or dislikes can make her pregnant! I will save the discussion on Bollywood’s illogical, misleading storylines for another day. But movies (now I mean across the globe) show teenage pregnancies and news show that India has a larger percentage of teenage pregnancies than even the UK, with 62 pregnant teen-girls for every 1000 women as against 24 in the UK. Now, isn’t that logical because these teen girls in India are actually married off at that age by the parents while that is not the case in the UK.

My thoughts as a thirty year old woman after watching Julie is only this — why am I not getting pregnant? 

I am financially stable, willing to have a baby, and I'm legitimately married too for my lovely Indian society. Then why? It's embarrassing not being able to reproduce while living in a country where the population is multiplying like bacteria. It makes me question and regret so many things! What kind of an Indian woman am I? What has, however, contributed to my general knowledge and misery in the same breath is the Internet, where I've read all about the science of pregnancy. I know everything. I am even doing practical sessions. What more can I do?

It's been 5 years. Every month passing with red dots is now an ocean of frustration with the feeling of “what went wrong this time?”

My Gynaecologist thinks that she is tying all lose knots every month after the bleeding begins. I read — "the endometric thickness being best as it can be — 21 mm, rupturing ovaries, developing hopes, and the bloody damage it does after all the math". Then again, I browse the Internet.

Ideally a woman’s egg is best in her twenties and they fade away by the time she's 35.

This is literally written all over the Internet! GULP. Did you see? I am 30 already. Feels like the clock is ticking too fast, I will be 35 in no time!

Facebook is another place that rubs salt on my wounds. Every other person's profile picture is with a kid — some right at the hospital, some being held by the proud parents, the same people I played with way back in 1980s. Some old pictures have the new parents being held by me in the arms as they could barely walk then.

I was never the jealous kinds. At any point in life. But the desire to give birth to a child is taking me on a cruel ride. You know? But I have still not given up. Next week, I am away for a Hysterosalpingography. See how I remember such complicated names like a parrot? While I say I have little hope, I still want to keep trying.

I want to end this with a sigh — I just came back home to find my husband write, "success rates after hysterosalpingography" on his phone.

Share This Story