The Mothership

The steel was like a slab of ice against my back. There was an array of instruments on the shelves beside me. An assortment of knives, forceps, clamps and all manner of menacing things – IV tubes, injections, beakers. I was nauseous and the tightness in my chest made it hard to breathe. I couldn’t do this. I sat up and reached for my phone, dialling the one person who was least likely to sympathise with me.

His voice echoed, angry and shrill.

“You can’t do this.”

“I have to.”

“But we are in this together.”

“But the idea was always to let women choose – that’s why we built it. And now I want to be able to choose.”

“But it goes against everything we made.”

“Why?”

I slid off the table, grabbed my clothes and shoved them in my bag.

“It just looks bad. It’s bad for business. We will have no credibility. They will pull our funding.”

“I don’t care. I know what I have to do.”

“What about the money that everyone gave us? They believed we had something here, Radhi. You can’t betray them!”

I have no choice. It’s all yours – you can have it all – everything we built together…

‘We?’ Ha. There’s never been ‘we’ – it’s always been ALL about you. And your precious Aman. Now you’re just going to up and leave me…

“I’m sorry. I really am. Just please don’t try to find me. Please,” I begged.

Maybe Amma was right, after all, I thought. I walked out of that room in my hospital robe and never looked back.

*

All of this began many years ago. I remember the day like it was yesterday – a crimson stain spread on the back of my skirt and I walked around like a bleeding corpse – everyone staring and pointing. My friend told me later that I was the first in our class to get it because I was the fattest. It was my earliest memory of embarrassment.

My aunt and mother immediately started preparations for the Manjal Neerattu Vizha. They printed invitation cards and my uncles insisted on printing a large hoarding with a cutout of me wearing a bright blue sari and an unnecessary amount of gaudy jewellery. Amma was a mix of joy and panic. She was on the phone with every living relative and long-lost family friend.

More people now knew that I had my period. Great, more embarrassment. ‘What an auspicious time’, she kept reminding me when I made a fuss about wearing a sari and all that blinding gold. ‘Your fertility is a symbol of holiness.’

Which made some sense at the time because they also began to construct what I first assumed was a sort of temple for me. It turned out to be a rather strange accommodation that my mother’s brother was summoned immediately to build. He arrived on his bike, bringing with him two friends and an assortment of leaves – coconut, mango and neem for the structure. He worked tirelessly while I sat at the back of the house and watched him from a distance, amused as I clutched my stomach in pain. This makeshift house was called a kudisai and it was where I was to stay until my period stopped. I wasn’t allowed in the kitchen or the prayer room in my actual house. I couldn’t believe this was happening in our urban household – I was the oldest girl in the family so all of this was very new to me and to my cousins who were too terrified and fascinated to even come and talk to me about any of it. I felt alone, with only a throbbing, grumpy uterus for company.

The ceremony itself was uncomfortable. I was made to sit on a small stool in our tiled bathroom. Amma, Periamma and two of my chithis poured water into a herb and flower-filled pan that was suspended over my head. Then I wore a kanjivaram silk sari with a paisley floral vine border and sat on a small flat wooden stool with a mound of rice underneath it. The priest chanted loudly and my mother silently wept with joy. The rest of the details are a bit fuzzy because I was giddy with the pain and worried about staining the sari. That a simple bodily function could warrant so much drama, I had no idea. That was only the beginning.

I went on to develop severe dysmenorrhea, a gripping pain that left me dizzy and emotional and in the hospital with IV lines and painkillers nearly every month. My teachers and family did not take me seriously at first. I would faint in PT classes, ask to see the nurse and would be told that I was too weak and to eat better. Some said I was anaemic, others said it was psychosomatic. But nobody had no solutions for me. If anything, they were less than sympathetic about a condition they felt I should have made my peace with by now. I missed school trips and opted out of dance performances because I was so fearful that my period would arrive and mess it up.

I hated being a woman tormented by the dread of my impending period and wretched cramps every month. Everyone I knew seemed to hate it. I wondered if perhaps I would be better off as a man.

On a holiday in Mahabalipuram when I was seventeen, I couldn’t go snorkelling and it made me furious. The salt in the air stung my angry sunburned skin. I had refused to go into the room and rest so I sat in agony at the restaurant while my grandmother knitted a shawl. We were seated right next to a large fish tank with dirty green water and bored, tired-looking fish. ‘Stop sulking now, come on. What can you do after all?’ she said.

‘Get rid of it?’ I took a fistful of french fries and shoved them in my mouth.

‘Ha. A hysterectomy? Then how will you have children?’.

I dipped more french fries in the ketchup and watched it drip like blood onto my plate.

‘Just accept that this is your lot in life as a woman,’ she said, ‘It will make things easier.’

As I sat in the restaurant, only half-listening to her lecture as I watched the fish tank and the waves gently caressed the shore, I had an idea.

*

Women had sent me tons of stories over the past few months that I had compiled for the investor presentation.

‘Thank you, Radhika, for the opportunity to excel at my job – I would have been looked over for promotions and leadership positions because eventually, I would have to manage a home. My uterus dictated my every decision. Now I can devote my focus to working hard and acing my job. I have total job security.’

‘No worries about period leave. No stress about maternity leave. No more excuses to put me in the corner. Thanks to the Mothership, I am limitless.’

The Mothership was my pride and glory. It was an apparatus unlike any other – a repository for uteruses. There were large glass enclosures with little compartments all hooked up to pink tubes that were connected to metal containers with all kinds of fluids. Looking through the glass compartments was like watching a beautiful performance – some uteruses were trembling, others were stationary, and others were pumping. There were various sections within the large hall – there was menstruating, ovulating, gestational, menopausal and a separate treatment section where we sent a uterus for examination, surgery and the like. I had a separate vault made for myself that has taken longer than expected to construct. In a few months, mine will be displayed here too, thriving and giving me the ability to go out into the world and thrive too. We’ve just received our second round of funding and we finally have enough for the VIP section I want to build out. And now we are so close.

I thought of the speech I had made while we pitched the idea to an open audience, hoping to secure potential investors and get some eyes on our project. Our whole team was there, with a few of our test subjects and a few members of the press. I opened my desk drawer and took out the paper on which I had written down my talking points.

Women are goddesses. We can do things that are unheard of. To bleed out every month but not die. Not just ‘not die’ – we live and work and do nearly everything a man can do. Even more. But for too long, our menstruation has been used as a weapon against us. Have you heard of the word hysteria? A word typically used for women, derived from the Greek word for ‘uterus’. A part of our very own body has become some sort of a weakness. A sign of impurity. A regular cleansing of our sins.

Every month, I am deemed unlucky. I emit an odor that can spoil food. My period is like dark magic – it leads anything I touch to spoil – pollutes water, and renders animals infertile. The cloth I use to absorb blood is deemed evil, like a black cat that crosses a stranger’s path.

I may reclaim some power when I fall pregnant within the confines of a socially-acceptable marriage, but if not, what does that make me? An outcast, an anomaly, a spectacle.   

It opened my eyes. I was able to see that society dictated the frameworks within which I receive respect, within which my uterus is regarded as a thing of value or a thing of disgust based on their own assessments and beliefs. Thanks to technology, I want to break down these constructs – enter The Mothership – a preservation unit with capsules for each uterus – duly protected, labelled, cared for, and nurtured to fulfil their purpose without affecting the women that bear them.

There are sections for everything from egg freezing to pregnancy, even surrogacy so you won’t have to worry about your fertility at all.

With adequate funding, we can roll these out to disadvantaged communities. That is why we began this venture. Girl children will not have to drop out of school. Never again will a woman be raped for using a distant toilet or trying to burn her pad in the dark of night. Never again will they endure infections because they cannot afford pads.

Applause erupted in the room, accompanied by loud cheering. I had to pause before I proceeded.

Our sister venture, in partnership with Tara Pharma, has built out பெண்pal – a two-dose pill that does everything a uterus would do – for instance stimulating the pituitary gland to release luteinising hormones and follicle-stimulating hormones, then another variant that releases progesterone and estrogen. It has been working exceedingly well so far in all 128 test subjects.

We’ve started phase one for elite customers, we’re working on building out the VIP section – rentals from these customers will be used toward funding for our next phase – women from rural communities for whom we started this venture in the first place.

It is not the blood that sucks the life out of us. It is these regressive beliefs. Let’s take back our power.

More applause. Some tears had been shed too, I had been told.

If you believe in The Mothership, we will be very grateful for your partnership. My co-founder, Abishek and I are more than willing to chat and address any of your questions.

If you would like to sign up, forms are available at the counter at the back. Someone will help you with any further details.

*

My mother was understandably horrified when I first told her what I was working on.

“But why do you need to do this? You are a researcher in obstetrics. Why can’t you stick to that? What is this business? Why do you have to give up your practice? Everything you have worked so hard for.”

I didn’t know how to explain things to her. Only I knew the pain I had endured. I needed to create these options for women like me. It had taken me years to get from the idea I had one day at the beach to this massive sophisticated apparatus.

It was why I was so grateful for Abishek’s support right from the start. I had all the ideas and he had a wide network of influential people. He knew someone everywhere because he had studied at the best schools but also had a family that was skilled in matters of the law. He knew people on ethics committees, hospital boards and in government offices. We were able to build my dream project because he was all in and very generous. I have no idea who he paid or cajoled or coerced into getting our foot in the door but we barely hit any roadblocks along the way. I never asked for any details.

This made Amma even more worried. She always told me that he probably harbored a secret crush which is why he was so committed to this. “Set the right expectations. Powerful people like him are very nice when they are nice and very, very scary when they are not.” But I think he only saw the money this could rake in. Plus he knew I was casually seeing Aman and didn’t seem to have a problem with it. If anything, he probably only had a soft spot for me.

“He has all the contacts, Amma,” I assured her. “All this networking comes easy to him and is profitable too. It’s a win-win for him.”

“Just be careful is all I am saying”, she replied. I thought of him only as a dear friend, close like a brother so I was grateful that there was no awkwardness between us and that he had kept it strictly professional all of these years. We had a great partnership and we were doing fantastically.

On a balmy Wednesday in June, a few weeks after our presentation, Abishek called to tell me that we had secured all the funding we needed and more. I sat down that day and wept with relief. Everything I had worked for was finally coming to life. We were in the papers and on magazine covers. To celebrate, Aman and I took a long holiday in Greece – the longest I had been away from work in years – two whole weeks of lounging by the sea, taking long walks in the sun and eating cheese. I returned to three weeks of stress-filled planning, travelling and investor meetings. When all of that was finally over, I was exhausted. I spent an entire weekend in bed, feeling like I couldn’t move a muscle. But Aman needed to travel to Mumbai for work the following week and Abishek insisted that I accept the invitation to speak at a workplace seminar. Grudgingly that Sunday evening, I scanned my calendar for a workable slot. That’s when it hit me. It had been seven weeks.

*

I couldn’t explain what happened later, even if I tried. A panicked pharmacy run later, I sat on the toilet, and couldn’t believe what I was seeing. It couldn’t be. I had spent all my adult life – eight years working my way up to this dream. And my uterus, as usual, had other plans. Two lines, clear as day, marking a road I didn’t think I would have to navigate.

Something in me instantly shifted. I knew I had options. Abortion was one – acceptable, good even. And then there was the one I had built from scratch – a huge enterprise for whom I would be an ideal candidate. I could do that. But I wanted what I already had. I wanted to see it through. I was going to keep this baby.

I had changed my mind. Nobody was going to like that. A woman can create a life of options, and still be judged when she independently exercises her choice. I stood on the railway platform with one duffel bag. I took out my paper with the speech on it and ironed it out with my palms. I held it up to the light. It all made sense to me. I felt a jolt of affection for that woman, for her innovation and grit and ambition. But she was a woman I no longer was. I also sensed a growing excitement about the woman I had become now. It was as if, for the first time in my life, I felt that my uterus and I could work together to make something. As if a truce had been called. A gust of wind descended and plucked the papers from my hand. A white flag floating in the breeze. I wanted to see where I would go from here. Was I a bad feminist? An irresponsible founder? A selfish person?

Amma was the only one who understood. When I called her, this is all she said to me, lovingly but sternly. “Remember, kanna, he has contacts. In high places.”

When I had made the call to Abishek, I had a burst of clarity about my future but not the faintest idea of how to make him see it. I was a woman who had changed her mind, severed from who I thought I was supposed to be — a woman who was on the run. I was already a mothership.