The mother-in-law kept berating her daughter-in-law for not having children and forced her to seek treatment everywhere—never knowing the sh0cking truth behind her infertility
Part One: The House Near The Bus Stand
The house was in Phagwara. Not the Phagwara you see on the highway, but the old Phagwara, near the bus stand, where the loudspeaker from the gurdwara and the loudspeaker from the temple compete every morning and nobody wins. It was a two storey house with a small shop on the ground floor, Joshi Kirana and General Store, and a family living on top of it.
In that house lived three people. Kamla Devi, sixty two, widow, mother of one son, owner of a sharp tongue and an even sharper desire for a grandson. Her son, Deepak, thirty four, who had inherited the shop and his father’s habit of saying, you see, Mummy is right. And her daughter in law, Nidhi, thirty one, who had come from Jalandhar after marriage, who had a B.Com degree and a quiet way of speaking that in Phagwara was often mistaken for weakness.
I am writing about Nidhi. She is the protagonist, though for two years in that house, no one treated her like one.
Nidhi and Deepak had been married for three years. No child. In a small town, three years without a child is not a private matter. It is a public project. Every auntie in the lane had a solution, every uncle had a reference of a doctor.
Kamla Devi was desperate for a grandson. Not a grandchild, a grandson. To continue the family line, to light the pyre, to take over Joshi Kirana and General Store. She would say it every day, as if saying it would make it happen faster.
“Nidhi, Sharma’s bahu had a son within ten months. She ate only ghee and almonds.”
“Nidhi, that girl from the bank, she went to that baba in Nakodar and she conceived in one month.”
“Nidhi, you are too thin, how will a child stay in a thin body.”
Nidhi was not thin. Nidhi was average. But constant comparison makes a person feel thin in every way.
Deepak did not defend her, not because he was cruel, but because he was trained. In that house, to defend your wife against your mother was to be called joru ka ghulam, and no man in Phagwara wanted that title. So he would say, “Nidhi, go, Mummy is saying for our good only, go and get the check up done.”
And so Nidhi went. Everywhere.
She went to the government hospital in Jalandhar for follicular study. She went to a private clinic in Ludhiana where the doctor spoke only in English and charged two thousand per visit. She went to an ayurvedic vaid who gave her bitter concoctions that made her vomit. She went for an HSG test that was so painful she cried on the table while the nurse told her to adjust. Every test came back, in medical language, normal. Her reports said her egg count was low and her uterine lining had some issue due to an old infection, but treatable. Treatable was not a word Kamla Devi understood. For her, no baby meant the daughter in law was faulty.
At home, Kamla Devi would keep a separate plate for Nidhi during her periods, saying impure blood spoils the shop’s luck. She would make Nidhi eat last, after everyone else, saying maybe the deities will pity her. She would call her own sisters and say on speakerphone, “What to do, we got an empty vessel.”
Nidhi stopped answering. She started waking up at four thirty, finishing kitchen work by seven, then sitting in the small store room that was also her bedroom, with her laptop, doing online accounting work for a firm in Chandigarh that Kamla Devi did not know about. That work was her secret savings, her secret self.
She also started hiding something else.
Part Two: The Medical Files
In the third year, Kamla Devi found a new doctor, a famous infertility specialist in Amritsar, Dr. Sandhu, who had a big hoarding with a smiling baby on it. She forced Nidhi to go there every fifteen days, a two hour bus journey each way. Deepak would go with her sometimes, mostly not.
Dr. Sandhu was actually kind. He was the first doctor who asked Nidhi, “What do you want,” instead of, “What does your mother in law want.”
Nidhi told him the truth in her second visit. She said, “Doctor, I am scared. If I tell them I am pregnant, my mother in law will take over my body. She will make me leave my work, she will make me sleep on a mattress on the floor, she will feed me only ghee, she will not let me go to my mother. She will decide everything, even how I should breathe. I have seen her do it to her niece. I do not want my pregnancy to become her project.”
Dr. Sandhu listened and then asked, “Are you pregnant now.”
Nidhi said, “I was. Two months ago. I lost it before I could tell anyone. I bled alone in the bathroom of this clinic. I did not tell Deepak because he would have told his mother immediately.”
Dr. Sandhu then did a full evaluation and said, “Your own eggs are very weak now because of the repeated infections and stress. If you want a healthy pregnancy that lasts, you will need donor egg. Legally, anonymously, but in your case, you mentioned your family has a relative who already offered.”
Nidhi had one person in mind. Not anonymous.
She went back to Phagwara and told Kamla Devi that Dr. Sandhu had said she needed six more months of treatment and complete rest from family stress. Kamla Devi was furious. She said, “Rest, rest, you only want rest. You want to avoid work.”
She increased the criticism. She started calling Nidhi by her maiden village name, as if to remind her she was an outsider. She made her go for one more jagrata for a son, making her sit for four hours in heavy smoke.
Nidhi tolerated it all, with a strange calmness. Deepak thought she had finally become obedient. Kamla Devi thought her taunts were finally working.
No one noticed that Nidhi had stopped eating papaya, had stopped drinking coffee, had started wearing slightly looser salwars, had started keeping her medical file locked with a small key.
In the fourth month of that year, Kamla Devi announced in front of the whole shop that she was going to look for a second wife for Deepak, because a tree that does not bear fruit must be replaced.
Nidhi was making tea at that moment. Her hand shook, but she did not spill.
That night, Deepak came to her and said, “Nidhi, please, give Mummy some hope, otherwise she will really do this.”
Nidhi looked at him, at this man she had once liked for his quiet smile, and she said, “I have already given you hope, Deepak. You just did not notice.”
She left the room and went to the store room and locked it.
The first major twist that broke the entire house came two days later, on a Sunday morning when Kamla Devi was shouting that Nidhi was barren and should be sent back to Jalandhar, and Nidhi, who had been silent for three years, came out of her room with a file in her hand and a three month pregnancy scan report inside it, placed it on the kitchen table where everyone was having chai, and said in a calm voice that she had actually been pregnant from early on, she had known for eleven weeks, she had hidden it on purpose because she was terrified that if Kamla Devi knew, she would control every bite she ate and every step she took, and she wanted to protect her baby from becoming a family trophy before it was even born.
Part Three: Overjoyed Until
For five minutes, there was complete silence in the Joshi house.
Then Kamla Devi did what Nidhi had expected. She screamed with joy. A joy that was loud, performative, and possessive all at once.
“Arre, my grandson, my grandson is coming,” she shouted, though the report did not say son, it only said single live fetus. She called her sisters, she called the temple pandit, she called the shop helper to distribute laddoos. She touched Nidhi’s feet, actually touched her feet, which she had never done. She said, “My bahu is not empty, my bahu is full.”
Deepak cried. He hugged Nidhi and said, “Why did you not tell me, Nidhi, why did you hide such a big thing.”
Nidhi said, “Because I wanted eleven weeks of peace.”
For two days, Nidhi became a queen. Kamla Devi made ghee laden pinnis, she forced Nidhi to eat almonds soaked overnight, she stopped making her work. She started talking to Nidhi’s womb, saying, “My grandson, my Deepak’s son, my heir.”
Nidhi let her. She was tired.
On the third day, Dr. Sandhu called Nidhi for a routine check up. Kamla Devi insisted on coming. Nidhi could not refuse. In the clinic, while the doctor was explaining nutrition, Kamla Devi asked, as small town mothers in law do, direct and without filter, “Doctor sahab, this child is fully my son’s, no, fully our blood.”
Dr. Sandhu paused. He looked at Nidhi. Nidhi had told him to be honest if asked directly, because lies in medical matters become complicated later.
He said, “Biologically, the child is your daughter in law’s husband’s sperm, but the egg is from a donor. Nidhi’s own eggs were not viable, as I explained in the report. So we used a donor egg, as per Nidhi’s consent and your son’s consent.”
Kamla Devi did not understand the English. She said, “Donor, what donor.”
Deepak understood. He had signed the consent form three months ago, in the clinic, when Nidhi had taken him alone. He had signed without reading much, because he was used to signing papers his mother told him to sign.
Nidhi said, quietly, in Punjabi, so Kamla Devi would understand, “Mummy ji, this baby is Deepak’s, but the egg is not mine. My eggs were weak. Doctor said if we use my egg, pregnancy will not stay. So we took an egg from a relative. It is allowed, it is legal, the child will be ours.”
Kamla Devi’s face changed. The joy that had been loud for two days turned into something else, suspicion, anger, calculation.
“Relative, which relative, why relative, why not anonymous, whose egg, whose blood is this child carrying, is this child even ours,” she started shouting in the clinic itself, in front of other patients.
Nidhi tried to calm her, but Kamla Devi dragged her out, took an auto back to Phagwara, and did not speak the whole way, which was more frightening than shouting.
At home, she locked the main door and said to Deepak, “Ask her, whose egg, which relative, tell me now, or I will go and jump in the canal, I will not allow a stranger’s blood in my family line.”
Part Four: The Sister Who Was Sidelined
That night, Nidhi told the second twist, the one she had been carrying even longer than the pregnancy.
She said, “The egg donor is your own younger sister, Mummy ji. Sunita Masi.”
The name fell like a stone in water.
Sunita was Kamla Devi’s younger sister, seven years younger. In family stories, Sunita was always the sidelined one. When their father died, the family property in Kapurthala, a small house and some land, was given entirely to Kamla and her brother, because Sunita had married outside the community, a Christian man from Kerala, a teacher. The family had said, she has chosen her own path, she does not need our property. Sunita had moved to Delhi, had two children, had worked as a school counsellor, and had not been invited to family functions for ten years, except when someone died.
Kamla Devi had not spoken to Sunita for five years, after a fight about their mother’s bangles.
Sunita was also, incidentally, the only person in Nidhi’s extended circle who had ever asked Nidhi, “How are you, really.”
Nidhi had met Sunita Masi two years ago, when Sunita had come to Phagwara for a quiet visit to see her ailing mother, Kamla’s mother, without informing Kamla. Nidhi had taken her to the bus stand. On the way, Sunita had spoken about her own life, about how she had donated eggs twice in her younger years for her friends, about how she was healthy and open to helping.
When Dr. Sandhu had suggested donor egg, Nidhi had immediately thought of Sunita, not because Sunita was Kamla’s sister, but because Sunita was kind, educated, and genetically healthy, and because Nidhi trusted her more than an anonymous donor from a bank. Deepak had agreed, because he remembered Sunita Masi as the only aunt who gave him toffees without counting them.
They had done the procedure legally, in Amritsar, with Sunita coming for two days, staying in a hotel, signing all consent forms as per Indian law for known donor, with full counselling.
Now, Nidhi told Kamla, “The child you are calling your heir, your blood, your grandson, carries the blood of the sister you threw out of the family. The sister you said brought shame. Her egg, your son’s sperm, my womb. So tell me, Mummy ji, whose line is this now.”
Kamla Devi sat down on the floor, her back against the fridge. Her face was a map of conflicting emotions that small towns rarely allow women to show. Pride, shame, anger, grief.
She had spent ten years saying Sunita was dead for her. Now Sunita’s genes would carry forward her family line. The grandson she wanted so desperately to continue the Joshi name would biologically be the son of the sister she had sidelined.
The entire saas bahu equation, which had always been about who controls the womb, suddenly turned upside down, because the womb was Nidhi’s, but the egg, the origin, was from the woman Kamla had rejected.
Deepak, for the first time, spoke without asking his mother. He said, “Mummy, if Sunita Masi’s egg had not been there, there would be no grandson. No grandchild at all. Nidhi did what you and I could not do. She found a way.”
Kamla Devi cried that night, not the loud wailing she did for sympathy, but a quiet, broken crying that Nidhi had never seen.
Part Five: What Grows In Whose Blood
For a week, Kamla Devi did not speak to Nidhi. Then, one morning, she did something no one expected. She called Sunita.
The phone call lasted forty seven minutes. Nidhi heard bits of it from the kitchen. Sorry, didi. Forgive me. Your bangles. Papa’s house. I was wrong.
Two days later, Sunita Masi arrived in Phagwara, not in a hotel, but at the house near the bus stand. She was fifty five, short hair, wearing a simple cotton saree and a cross pendant that she did not hide. Kamla Devi touched her feet, actually bent down and touched her feet, which was unheard of, because Kamla was the elder sister.
Sunita hugged Nidhi for a long time and said, “Thank you for trusting me.”
She placed her hand on Nidhi’s small bump and said, “This child will have three mothers, then. One who gave the egg, one who gave the womb, one who will give the stories. That is not less, that is more.”
Kamla Devi, who was listening, said, with great difficulty, “Will you stay till the baby is born, Sunita.”
Sunita said, “If Nidhi wants.”
Nidhi said, “Yes.”
The last months of pregnancy were not perfect, but they were different. Kamla Devi still wanted a grandson, but she stopped saying grandson. She started saying grandchild. She started asking Nidhi, what do you want to eat, instead of telling her what to eat. She started going to the shop less and sitting with Nidhi more. She asked Sunita about her children, her husband, her life in Delhi, questions she had never asked in twenty years.
When Nidhi had mild spotting in the sixth month, Kamla Devi did not call Guruji. She called Dr. Sandhu. She did not do a jagrata. She made sure Nidhi rested.
The child was born in February, not in Phagwara, but in a good hospital in Jalandhar, as per Nidhi’s wish. It was a girl.
A girl. After all that desperate wanting for a grandson to continue the line.
When the nurse said, it is a girl, Kamla Devi was the first to hold her. She held her for a long time, looked at her tiny face that had Sunita’s eyes and Deepak’s forehead and Nidhi’s stubborn chin, and she said, “She will continue whatever line she wants. Shop, school, whatever.”
She named her, with Nidhi’s permission, Asha. Hope.
Sunita Masi stayed for one month, then went back to Delhi, promising to come every summer. Kamla Devi now sends her money, not out of guilt, but out of a late, awkward love, and Sunita sends back pickles made by her husband.
Nidhi still does her accounting work, still lives in the house near the bus stand, but now she has a small table in the shop where she sits and manages the accounts, and Kamla Devi tells customers, my bahu is the real owner.
Deepak has learned to make tea. It is not great tea, but it is his own.
And Asha, who is now six months old and drools a lot, has three mothers who argue about how much ghee she should eat, which is exactly how it should be in a family that finally understood that blood is not just about whose egg and whose sperm, but about who stays, who forgives, and who dares to hide a pregnancy to protect it until it is strong enough to be born.
