I was born after my mother, a school teacher, working full time, a woman in her mid-20s, suffered a terrible miscarriage. Losing a boy. I came after my parents, already in the throes of trouble in paradise, largely stemming from my biological father’s undetected mental health issues, decided to give baby making one more shot.
Perhaps, like most married, desi couples in the subcontinent, the act was more one of self-preservation. Perhaps, it was an attempt to keep their fractured relationship intact. My mother, who was soon to be widowed after my birth, often speaks of the hardships of her pregnancy, how she slogged till the day she was to deliver. Climbing a steep flight of stairs on a freezing December afternoon, as an invigilator in another school in Kolkata, and how after a difficult pregnancy where she barely could touch food and yet had to keep cooking for guests at home, she contracted malaria. Ma could not breastfeed me. She was relieved, I think. The weeks we spent separated — some sort of a rest, I think. Though, I sense, she is scared to say the truth. Motherhood, after all, is seen as an act of supreme self-sacrifice and how can Ma confess that hers was a tough act!
But we aren’t here to dissect family history.
Neither to ask what business does feminist writer Taslima Nasrin, a childfree woman herself, have to question another’s choice and modus operandi of childbearing! Not surprising that as soon as she threw up some muck on Priyanka Chopra with a scathing tweet: “Surrogacy is possible because there are poor women. Rich people always want the existence of poverty in society for their own interests. If you badly need to raise a child, adopt a homeless one. Children must inherit your traits — it’s just a selfish narcissistic ego.”
Internet trolls offensively attacked Priyanka for “outsourcing” childbirth, and “using” another person’s body to safeguard herself from the travails of actual childbirth — some going to the extent of pre-empting that she would be an “unworthy and selfish” mother.
Not to pick bones with Nasrin, but isn’t having children in India — the second-most populous country, whether you adopt a destitute from an orphanage/from someone in your immediate family, or the expensive IVF/surrogacy way — ultimately an act of selfishly wanting your bloodline to continue and ensuring old age, insurance cover? This, despite a staggering rise in DINK demographic — double income, no kids.
An overwhelming 51 percent of urban households live on the income of a single earner, while double-income families are a distant 26 percent, as per the 2011 Census. Still, reproduction remains a national obsession — the sign of male virility and female fertility. A sign that all is well in the marriage. A child is legacy. Lineage. Labour. Laws.
Here, how we have children is more telling than why we want more children at all. At what cost?
Let’s examine the aftermath of this pandemic which has visibly toppled a woman’s work-life balance and according to data put together for Economic Times by the Avtar Group, four out of every 10 women, surveyed by the diversity and inclusion consulting firm, reported child care as a challenge when returning to office for a 9 am to 5 pm work setup. Several women, especially mothers with young children who earlier had a supportive ecosystem because of the infrastructure of creches and playschools, were left with no option but to quit their jobs with most primary schools not having reopened and creches still closed. According to the Gender Gap Index in 2020, India’s rank is at 112th. It ranks 117th in wage equality for the same work.
In an interview with Vanity Fair magazine, Priyanka was asked if her mother, Madhu Chopra, aspired to become a grandmother soon. To which the actor replied, “They’re a big part of our desire for the future. By God’s grace, when it happens, it happens.” The interviewer then goes on to probe on her frenzied lifestyle, whether her shooting schedules matched her equally busy husband’s. “No, we’re not too busy to practice,” answered Priyanka, clarifying that family is a priority. Despite calling herself a “worker bee”, and, a “very, very ambitious person”, PC claimed she was “craving balance”, as a woman — “craving being able to do things for the soul”, that she hadn’t earlier, as she was just having her “blinders on”, and “working”.
Et tu, Vanity Fair!
Balance = baby-making.
And, despite such sanitised answers, Priyanka, a super successful and super rich global icon (according to Celebrity Net Worth, the 39-year-old star enjoys a reported $70 million fortune with a $10 million annual income of late, and Jonas’ net worth is estimated to be $50 million), if reports are to believed, opted to have her first born child via a surrogate because she has no time to physically be together with her beau and thus “conceive when she is ovulating”.
In the past, Kim Kardashian and Kanye West “Ye” welcomed two of their four kids, Chicago (born 2018) and Psalm (born 2019) via a surrogate. Other Hollywood A-listers like Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick, Jimmy Fallon and Nancy Juvonen Fallon and Tyra Banks all started their respective families using the route of modern science. Closer home, B-town biggies, Shilpa Shetty, Preity Zinta, Aamir Khan and Shah Rukh Khan have all had children via a surrogate.
Why are we then attacking Priyanka? Blaming her? Calling her names? Attacking her personal decision?
Because our voyeuristic, spy cam, social media dumps didn’t get a sneak peek into that one mandatory magazine cover shoot sporting a baby bump? Angered that the couple’s Insta which regularly displays PDA didn’t flaunt Priyanka’s baby shower photos? That the international paparazzi did not catch the first shot of the newborn, camping as they usually do outside the hospital? That keyboard ninjas or armchair reporters could not even give us dope on the gender of the infant. Fans second guessing, at best, that it is a girl, born prematurely.
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Or because Priyanka got away before the Indian Parliament passed the proposed new Surrogacy Regulation Bill, which permits only Indian couples, married for at least five years and childless, to opt for surrogacy. It stipulates that surrogate mothers must be “close relatives” of the recipients and points out the strict criteria for surrogate mothers, genetic parents, fertility clinics, medical professionals, and the egg and sperm donors. All commercial surrogacy will be banned, as the strict new law states that all women who agree to carry babies to delivery as surrogates must agree to do so for “altruistic” reasons. It also demands all couples applying for surrogate mothers prove their infertility.
The last clause being the real shadow area.
Why did Priyanka and her family, her husband and his family, and their PR teams and army of publicists keep their mouths shut? With their social media feeds infested with award shows, red carpet appearances and PDA, how does one explain a woman’s aggressive, professional ambition? Her gutsy choice to enjoy motherhood, sans the supreme sacrifice of actually bearing a child in your womb and giving birth? Of risking a miscarriage? Of being labelled a failure, in case the carefully synchronised sex or expensive IVF treatments? In case the Vanity Fair interviewer, who sounded every bit a replica of a nosy, desi, Bhabhiji, is forced to ask the same question, again. Something that would never be asked, expected, or placed like a suffocating noose around a married, male star?
It’s the privilege of patriarchy, allowing men to get away. But not before it patronises women as the one behind their worldly success. A myth Priyanka Chopra has managed to debunk. And, defy!
Former Lifestyle Editor, Sreemoyee Piu Kundu is the bestselling author of ‘Sita’s Curse’, India’s first feminist erotica, and ‘Status Single’, the first non-fiction on single women, amongst others. She is also a leading columnist on sexuality and gender. Views expressed are personal.
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source https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/surrogacy-because-no-time-for-sex-with-husband-is-that-why-we-are-so-pissed-off-with-priyanka-chopra-10351801.html
