Mother India

"A lady with no child is inauspicious. People don't want to get too close to me," Jhuma says bitterly. Friends and family are fully aware that Jhuma and her husband Niladri have not been able to conceive, but they still ask how old their child is and what school he goes to. They are trying to "humiliate me", Jhuma explains. After eight years of marriage their situation is becoming desperate. "We've been to many doctors and many gods. Now we are going to Hyderabad." Out of place and overwhelmed in the cosmopolitan city, Jhuma and Niladri examine the diagram on her desk warily. "What is a fallopian tube?" Niladri asks obviously uncomfortable. The other side of the hospital, Varalaxsmi's husband is also uncomfortable: Varalaxsmi decided to become a surrogate mother whilst he was away. "You have done a very bad thing", he tells her. But with the money she is paid she plans to educate her own daughter. "I'll send her to the English school", Varalaxsmi smiles. She has been promised $2,000 for delivering a healthy baby. "If it's a boy they'll pay even more". When Dr Rama began her career, there were only six fertility clinics in India. "Now they are like mushrooms", she laughs. "Having a baby is the top priority of a marriage. They get the money for treatment by hook or by crook." She dismisses questions about how her work is impacting on India's serious population problem with a shrug: "In some houses there are 10 children. But in others there are none." As their options for having a child become increasingly narrower, Jhuma and Niladri struggle to accept their situation and to navigate the complex social stigmas. "If I can't have a baby I want to adopt someone else's. But he doesn't", Jhuma sighs. Candid and often heartbreaking, this intimate portrait lifts the lid on a universal human problem embroiled in a tragic cultural conundrum.