A Daughter's Sin 11.

Bangalore, INDIA

Indira sat in the doctor's waiting room staring at the wall. Her heart was pounding as she contemplated several possibilities, it was like deja vu, this was her third pregnancy yet she was childless.

Her mind wandered back to her last two experiences. At twenty-three years old, she had married Vishal Maharaj who was twenty-five at the time. She had not known much about him, but her father had told her, he was from a good family and a software programmer in Bangalore, India's silicon valley. He would take care of her. Indira was a secondary school science teacher in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, and was excited about moving to the city of Bangalore. 

That was five years ago. Vishal had been loving and kind to her. She had fallen in love with this gentleman who often asked her opinion on issues unlike most. That was until she became pregnant and the ultrasound had revealed she was to have a baby girl.
Vishal started acting strange and insisted she must have an abortion, she was distraught, this was her first child  She did not want to abort a healthy viable fetus. 

Indira pleaded with Vishal but he was constantly irritable and aloof as if she was responsible for being pregnant with a daughter, her mother-in-law was the worst insisting she go through with the abortion, listing on her fingers the reasons a son was preferred over a daughter. Dowry was expensive, a girl child was a burden, it cost more money to care for a daughter than a son. She constantly nagged Indira.. Indira's mother had not been supportive either, in the end. Indira had an abortion and would never forgive herself for not being strong enough to fight them all.

After the abortion she loathed herself and Vishal for the part he played in the loss of their first baby. She lost interest in him and her marriage.
Six months later, when she found out she was pregnant again, she contemplated hiding this from her husband. But it was a herculean task, how can a wife hide such from her husband.  Soon enough Vishal found out, he insisted they go and have an ultrasound to know the sex of the baby.

Again it was a female, she had refused to be part of an abortion. How much pain can one woman take, she could not live with her conscience, What was India's future going to be, who will the boys marry when they became men. The government had passed laws to protect the unborn girl child but in a country like India, it was hard to enforce. So many girl fetuses were aborted or those who were lucky to be born were killed. Indra did not want to be part of it of horrible history.
 

Finally, it seemed Vishal and his mother had accepted for her to have the child, it was not until later that week when she suddenly found herself bleeding, she realized the old woman had put something in her food, that had caused her to have a miscarriage. she lost her second baby, Indira was inconsolable, she wanted to die and end it all.

 This was her third pregnancy and she was very nervous, She was not ready to lose another child to the illogical quest for only Sons