Sanjeevani​: That Which Gives Infinite Life

In the dewy morning, dirt and rough clay roads rubbed off on Shardi’s anklet-clad feet as she ran from her straw-roofed hut to the brick-laid home of her sister. The wails of the pregnant Kashibai, getting louder with every step, seemed to resonate with the rush of blood in her ears.

Shardi was the midwife for the village. Dozens of children were born under her auspicious supervision​. ​If you asked her where she got her degree, she would stare at you blankly, laugh and say in Basha, the common tongue, “Doctor yethe awasni, mar degree kasan?” ​Doctors don’t even come here, why do I need a degree?

“Doctor bolo, inko chwari hai, yethe awoni,” the husband rasped breathlessly, sweat pouring into his eyes and salty tears pouring out. ​The doctor said another mother was giving birth, and he wouldn’t come here.

Shardi grit her teeth and pursed her lips, but everyone knew what she was thinking.

A secluded but lush village, Mugdumpur was home to members of the Scheduled Caste, commonly known as Dalits, or “Untouchables.” The people were poor, subsisted on the staples they grew, and were outcasts from regular society. They had their own segregated primary schools, government clinics, and villages. No one was rich enough to afford college, let alone medical education. Even the doctors willing to treat Mugdumpur villagers would prefer to see their higher-paying, city-dwelling, non-Dalit neighbors.

Shardi snapped at the young boy staring curiously in the foyer of the home. “Pani la!” The boy ran off in search of water to help bring his little sister into the world.

With the warm water, she wiped the blood running down Kashibai’s thighs. Using her fingers, Shardi deftly measured the width of the cervix.

“You’re very wide apart and bleeding quite a bit. When did your contractions start?”

“Kai?” Kashibai asked absently.

“When did the pain start?” Shardi asked more urgently.

“It must have been a few hours ago,” Kashibai’s husband fretted. “I’m not sure. She’s been like this for a while. I didn’t know what to do.”

“Why did you wait so long to call me?”

“I don’t know. Kashibai didn’t want to worry you. She told me to wait until the baby was really coming!” 

Shardi opened up her worn cloth bag and gave a small pair of scissors to the husband. “Go boil these in a pot of water, and wrap it in a clean cloth. You will need it after the baby comes.”

“Ok, ok. Yes, I will. Just a moment.” 

Shardi smiled. The scissors were sterilized already but keeping the nervous husband out of the way was more helpful than anything.

Shardi spread her sister’s legs wider apart and looked into her eyes. “Kashibai, you need to push. You’re too dilated, and the baby needs to come out ​now. ​Do you understand?”

Kashibai nodded anxiously.

“Now... push!”

Kashibai strained, the veins in her head budging as she pushed harder. The sweat on her brow dripped down to soak her blouse, and she let out a scream of frustration.

“Push! Come on, don’t stop breathing. Breathe with me like this, in and out.”

Kashibai pushed harder and harder until her whole body seemed to burn in agony.

“You can do this Kashi, you can. Don’t give up.”

Shardi coaxed Kashibai for the next few hours, willfully hiding the fact that the baby’s umbilical cord was tied around its head. As the baby’s head crowned, the sheen of the pale umbilical cord was hidden by splotches of blood. Shardi hooked a finger under the cord, and slowly loosened it enough to pull it over the baby’s head. Once the head was out, she gently pushed the baby’s head slightly downward, cradling it in one hand.

“Kashi, now is the time. You need to use all your strength to push now. You’re almost there.”

Kashibai screamed in excruciating pain, so loud that the neighbors awoke from their sleep. Many years later, they recalled that they had never heard anything so loud. 

And with one final push, out I plopped, into Shardi’s worn, steady hands.

***

I knew Shardi as ​Peddamma​, or aunt. As a young girl I followed Peddamma everywhere. She was my second mother, as my own mother told me often. One night, after helping her attend to a distressed pregnant girl with false contractions, Peddamma told me to come with her.

“Where are we going?”

“The village marketplace. I need to buy some flowers.”

“Are we buying flowers for Teej?”

“Teej is still three days away. Why would we buy flowers so early? They’d wither in the heat.”

“Then why?” I wailed in discontent, exhausted from the glaring sun.

“​Chup! ​Little girls shouldn’t ask so many questions.”

I got quiet. When Peddamma said that, it meant she was frustrated.

We walked to the Hanuman Temple. Peddamma let me pick out strands of blossoms, a mix of turmeric-yellow marigolds and dove-white jasmine. She paid the turbaned man with the few pennies she got from her recent patient. I followed her back home in silence, clutching the edge of her blue cotton sari to jump over the puddles of muddy water that interrupted the dirt road.

When we reached the mango grove at the entrance to Mugdumpur, Peddamma stopped at a quiet spot near the riverbank, where a mango tree stood farther from the rest. Three small boulders stood facing the riverbank, red ​kumkuma ​powder smeared across the front, with dried garlands of Aboli flowers surrounding each one.

Peddamma gingerly replaced each papery-thin garland with the new ones I had picked out. Questions bubbled inside me, but I stood silent. The gurgle of water from the Manjeera River beside us was the only sound I could hear clearly, punctuated by the rings of bicycle bells and purring of tractors far off. Peddamma gathered me into her lap, and I dozed off.

I awoke at the soft heaving of Pedamma’s chest, my face wet with tears that were not mine. I clung to her like a sailor clutching at a boat’s mast in a typhoon.

“Mar bidda, mar bidda,” she whispered. I brushed Pedamma’s hair out of her face. I didn’t know why she was crying, but I knew she wouldn’t tell me if I asked.

The walk back was quiet. Peddamma broke the silence.

“You see this plant here?”

“Yes. It looks ugly.”

“Don’t say that. It’s called ​sanjeevani​. They say Lord Hanuman carried an entire mountain on his little finger, so that a priest could find the herb on the mountain and save Lakshmana’s life.”

“I don’t get it. Why didn’t he bring just the herb?”

“What did I say about little girls asking questions?”

“Ok.”

“This herb is magical. It can save people, heal their pain, and even take away their sorrow.”

“How does it work?”

“No one knows. But I use it for each and every birth. The babies are born red and screaming when I rub the paste over their mother’s belly.”

Curious, I ran the soft, textured leaves over my hands.

“Did you use it for Ma?”

“I didn’t have time. You couldn’t wait to come meet me.”

I smiled, and held her hand to jump over the mud puddles on the way home.

***

Every year, Teej was a beautiful festival, if not a bit macabre. The villagers sacrificed many chickens for the holy goddess Merama and tied chicken legs to the branches of the tree under her shrine, praying for a successful harvest. It was a ritual that went back as long as time, steeped in the religion and culture of our ancestors. All the older girls participated in the week long celebration of fertility, and I was ecstatic to finally join.

At my first Teej, however, Peddamma was nowhere to be found.

“Ma, where is Peddamma?”

“She’s too old to come. This is a fertility festival,” Ma replied offhandedly.

“But you’re older than her.”

“I’ve come here for you. She doesn’t have children, so she doesn’t need to come.”

A ​dadiyadi​, an old woman, was listening to our conversation.

“Kashi, why do you shelter your daughter? Shardi is not allowed here, ​beti​. She lost her children in childbirth. She’s bad luck at a fertility festival.”

I scrunched my nose. Peddamma had helped bring more children into the world than any other woman here. Why she wasn’t allowed made no sense.

Ma huffed and dragged me towards the riverbank.

As was tradition, all the unmarried girls carried baskets of wheat grass on their heads, walking towards the river. A week ago, we made the basket from date twigs and filled them with fertile soil. We watered them every day to make sure the sprouts grew healthier. “​If the wheat seedlings are tall green and strong, then the girl will get a good husband,” ​I remember the older women saying. I didn’t know how much I believed in this. It seemed random that the fate of wheat seedlings would influence that of a human’s. But I did not wish to disobey custom.

We set the baskets into the water and paddled with our hands to push them down the current. Hands clasped, I prayed that I may get a good husband and be blessed with many children.

I ran home quickly afterward.

“Peddamma! Where are you?”

“Ahh,” she called from behind the clay fire pit in her small hut.

“What are you doing?”

“Cooking.”

“Why didn’t you come today? I wanted you to help me decorate my basket.”

Peddamma smiled. “That’s for unmarried girls. It's not for me.”

“Ma was there. All the other girls’ mothers too.”

“The villagers would be upset.”

“Why do you care what they think? You should be celebrated. You’re the only one helping all these pregnant women birth their children. Why do you take care of all these women when they don’t even let you pray and celebrate with them?”

Peddamma looked at me deeply, and after a while, she sighed.

“If I didn’t follow their customs, they wouldn’t allow me to help them. Many babies would die.”

“So let them! They deserve that for the way they treated you.”

Peddamma looked like she wanted to slap me.

“Let them? Let their children die? Do you know the grief and sorrow a mother feels when a child is ripped from her breast? A thousand knives in your heart wouldn't hurt as much. Ignorant, silly girl.”

“I’m sorry. I just wanted you to be there.”

She looked at me, and her voice softened.

“A woman who lost her only children, helping other mothers birth their children. God has a cruel sense of humor.” She smiled.

We sat in silence as the fire crackled and hissed under the pot of food.

That was the last time I saw her smile.

***

Many years passed until I was able to help Peddamma with her patients. Every time, she used the ​sanjeevani​, and every time, the baby was born healthy. I wasn’t sure that the herb was responsible. Everyone trusted Peddamma beyond words. Perhaps her presence was enough to calm the mother and ease the baby out.

As I grew, so did the babies we cared for. The days blurred as I saw them grow around me, and in a way, they became my children. Peddamma and I were mothers in our own way.

But the day I lost her was one I’ll never forget.

On the morning of my fifth Teej, I woke up with a fright. The wails of my mother, father, and relatives rang in my ears all morning.

“What happened? Why are you crying?” I asked.

No one would tell me.

Everyone was wailing and sobbing, and that’s when I saw her.

Peddamma, covered in a white cloth, looking peaceful. Two cotton balls plugged up her nose. A red dot of ​kumkuma​on her forehead. Her hair was wet.

My heart beat faster and faster, and every noise faded away.

I don’t know how what happened the next few days. Somehow I came to find out what happened, but I couldn’t remember who told me. Peddamma had drowned in the river during a flash flood caused by the monsoon, her body found washed up in the nearby town.

I cried for days and days.

I couldn’t believe that God would take away someone who had done so much for others. It wasn’t that she died, and in just revenge, I lost my belief in a god. It was the feeling that when she died, I reached for faith and found nothing there.

I couldn’t celebrate with the other girls, decorating their baskets and laughing merrily. I wanted to leave and go far away.

“What’s wrong, ​beti​? Why won’t you float your basket down?” my mother asked. She had one thousand lines of worry on her face. I couldn’t bear to see it.

I dropped my basket and ran.

I ran and ran and ran.

I ran despite Ma calling after me. I ran through the puddles in the dirt roads, the mud splashing onto me. I ran past the small hut and the brick home, the long trees and the small children playing in the street. I ran until I got to the mango grove, and then until I got to the edge of the Manjeera River.

There, under the tree just a little farther away from the others, I searched for the three small rocks. They were gone. All that was left were three small imprints in the ground, filled with muddy silt from the river.

I didn’t know what I was looking for. As I walked back, my head hung low, my mind swirling with the thought of my mother’s scoldings. I couldn’t will myself to go back.

A few paces away, the patch of sanjeevani in my path glowed as the sunlight refracted off the water in my eyes. Trembling, I walked through the plants, letting my muddy feet get washed by the leaves, softly scraping away the dirt that had accumulated. I leaned down and gently picked the plants out, pushing the dirt away from its roots and pulling it out whole. I carried them back home in the end of my sari.

Picking up my twig basket, I dumped out the wheat seedlings. I began potting it with soil from the river, delicately placing the ​sanjeevani ​in the middle.

“What are you doing?” my mother asked. “What happened to your wheat seedlings?”

“I want to send these down the river.”

My mother blinked, twice with eyebrows furrowed, and once in slow recognition. She gently pushed me to go with the others.

I walked down to the riverbank, the other girls staring curiously at my plant.

As if rocking a baby to sleep, I pushed the basket into the water.

I prayed, hands clasped, as it floated off. I prayed that Peddamma and her children were happy together in heaven. I prayed for her to look down on me and help me take this sorrow away. I prayed that she would keep my family safe and that she would grant new babies safe passage into this world. As I prayed, my tears mixed with the monsoon rains, and a bit of the clouds swirling around my head melted away.

Mostly, I prayed for Peddamma, who for my whole life, had been my ​sanjeevani​.