Mommy, where do babies come from??

When I was 4 years old, I overheard my Dadi gossiping about someone who had 2 kids already and had another one on the way. She was shaking her head and disapprovingly telling my mother how they didn't have enough money to raise 3 kids, and what a mistake it was.

For the next couple of days, I was highly confused. A year ago, when I had asked my mother where babies come from, she had told me cleverly, "Babies are gifts from god". That answer had been enough to satisfy my curiosity and I had happily gone back to playing, thinking that God, one fine day, decides to put a baby in  woman's tummy (that is, if she and her husband have been nice and haven't been doing too much wrong). Then the woman grows fat and when she's fat enough, the doctor takes a big special knife and cuts the woman's stomach open to take out the baby.


Dadi's remark made me ask my mom a few days later, "Mommy, why was Dadi saying that the 3rd kid is a mistake? The woman can't help it if God puts a baby in her. Should she stop being nice if she doesn't want god to give her more babies?"

This was the day from when mom's white lie started costing her, A LOT. Every time I asked a question mildly related to having babies, or sex, she would find a way to avert it and give a highly ambiguous answer.
This time, she answered "You're right. The woman can't help it. Dadi doesn't know what she's saying. Why don't you go ask Dadi this yourself and see what she says?" Out of my love for Dadi, I never did go and ask her, fearing that it might maker her angry. But to this day I regret not asking her. I wonder what answer she would have given.

A few weeks later, I was watching some movie on television, in which an unmarried woman was pregnant. My mom had told me that only married women can get pregnant. She said that God doesn't give babies to women who are not married. So I asked my mom, "Mommy, how is that woman pregnant?". My mom, once again very cleverly, told me that the woman had been bad and to punish her god had given her a baby to take care of, without a husband. At the time, I thought that made sense, and without really questioning her further, I went back to watching the movie. Till this date, I wish I hadn't.

Now THAT is an excellent question

Years rolled by, without me having a single clue as to where babies REALLY come from. When I entered class 6, some friends and class mate's parents had already told them everything there was to know (well, not EVERYTHING, per say. But let's just say they had learnt as much about sex as one can learn from parents).  These kids would go around educating the other kids. However, most kids, at the time, refused to believe what they were saying. A majority of the clueless lot (which I happened to be a part of) ganged up against the educated lot. According to us, those kids were lying and trying to pull a prank on us. They were wrong. There was no way they were right. Because if THAT was where babies came from, it meant that our parents would have to do certain things to have produced US. And there was absolutely NO WAY that our innocent parents could have done THAT.

But as more and more people came face to face with reality, the clueless lot also began accepting it. Of course, things were never clear to most of us until much later. There was no adult who we could go to and ask. We just had to make do by asking each other and learning as much as we could from the scattered pieces of information that came our way every now and then.

I can't help wishing that my parents (or any adult for that matter) had simply handed me a book which explained everything, if they didn't want to tell me themselves. It would have made things so much easier to understand. I was lucky enough to be part of a peer group who was relatively mature about this. There were people who knew, and people who didn't. The people who knew, would tell everything they could to the people who didn't. It was one of the things that we all just got through together, being kids of a completely different kind of generation.

There are people who aren't as fortunate. A lot of teens, remain part of the clueless lot  for a long time. They find out about these things at an age when it is much more difficult to accept. Some of them do not find out about it until marriage. Some of them slowly discover it, by watching television sitcoms (which i need not say, are produced in other parts of the world) and later, by watching porn films (much to the disapproval of the rest of the country).

Being discrete may have been the way things worked in the old days. For all you know, it may have been an attempt on the parent's behalf to protect their kid. But it sure as hell doesn't seem to be working now.

I don't know if it's too much to ask for, but I wish my mom had just told me the truth. Maybe not at the age of 4, but before I found out from random people in my class. That way, I wouldn't have spent half my teen years finding out that babies are not actually gifts from God.

But until the older generations continue to shy away, we'll get through things by ourselves, just as we always have :)