I count my blessings

It must be 2004-2005. I am about ten years old. Mom and grandma are talking about an acquaintance. From the tidbits that I pay attention to while reading Harry Potter, I gather that this couple recently had a third female child while they were desperately wishing for a son. Apparently some ‘Baba’ has advised them to dress one of their girls as a boy. An image of a male child would ensure that the mother bears a son next time. They choose their second daughter, an eight-year old, for this purpose. My mom and grandma agree that this is insane and unacceptable, and the conversation ends there.

I am twelve now. grandma is gossiping about that family again. The mother is pregnant, but ultrasound says it’s a girl. They are going to abort the child. They are giving up. Their daughter will go back to long hair and girly clothes.

I must be around ten again. A friend who lives nearby is over to study with me on a Sunday afternoon. She is the fifth girl child in her family, with one younger brother. I am very well aware that they had six children because they wanted a son. That’s no biggie.

While we study and chat, her father comes looking for her. I hear him asking my mom, ‘Is Nakusa here?’ I am confused.

‘That’s not your name, is it a nickname or something?’ I ask.

My friend smiles. ‘It means ‘Nakoshi’(unwanted). They didn’t want me, so they call me ‘Nakusa’.’ She explains.

I think she is joking, but I really don’t get the joke… I don’t think too much of it after that. Years later, my mother confirms the story and I can finally make sense of that incident.

Where I come from, these stories are more of a rule than exception. My friend at least had a different name on the school roster. Many of these girls grow up with ‘Nakusa’ as their only and official name. Many more grow up fully aware that they would have been aborted if they could have been. All of them have learned to smile and explain their name to their stupid privileged friends in a very matter-of-fact way. In 2012, over two hundred girls named ‘Nakusa’ or ‘Nakushi’ in the district of Satara were officially renamed ‘Aishwarya’(prosperity). I wonder how they felt looking at this news item in the local newspaper. I wonder if they felt any more wanted.

I grew up in many different worlds at the same time. Being treated just as a child, not a girl or a boy, I witnessed these stories but never could make much sense of them. I always regarded these people as ‘other people’, ‘different people’, ‘I have nothing in common with them’, even though I played with them and ate with them and loved some of them as I would love a sibling. As I grew up and wrapped my head around these stories, I started taking my privilege less for granted. To this day, I count my blessings for being presented with every possible opportunity and being assured I can do anything I want. I count my blessings that I work with the brightest people in the world, get to voice my opinions, and be interrupted by some of the most capable men on the planet. I count my blessings that I get to travel the world and make my own life decisions, as long as I don’t wander off in the dark in the middle of the night...