Leela stared at the white plastic stick, silently begging the Hindu goddess of fertility for two blue lines. But once again, Parvati was not playing. Leela pulled down the waistband of her jeans examining her pockmarked belly. Countless tracked cycles and three rounds of IVF, each preceded with the optimism of \u2018this time!\u2019 followed by a dream shattered. Grief, despair, jealousy, overwhelm and other inexplicable emotions joining the rollercoaster on each trip.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThis time we\u2019re done\u201d said Rahul, \u201cIVF has decimated our sex life. And in case you\u2019re wondering, I can\u2019t countenance surrogacy, it\u2019s rent-a-womb exploitation on steroids and I won\u2019t be part of it. I\u2019d prefer a puppy, much less trouble.\u201d he concluded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Four years of trying and he just calls it with a pathetic joke, thought Leela. A Langston Hughes poem she was analysing with her students played in her mind. What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up\/ like a raisin in the sun?\/ Or fester like a sore – \/ And then run?\/ Does it stink like rotten meat?\/ Or crust and sugar over -\/ like a syrupy sweet?\/ Maybe it just sags\/ like a heavy load.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Paradoxically Rahul\u2019s ethics had been part of what initially attracted Leela to him. Now they represented an insurmountable barrier to the baby she was so desperate for. An international human rights lawyer working mainly for NGOs, Rahul\u2019s principles were part of his DNA. They also meant he was highly qualified yet low earning. Leela\u2019s English literature lecturing work paid the majority of their bills; the largest being to the fertility clinic having long since exhausted the single cycle of publicly funded treatment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Adoption was the compromise which led them to the orphanage in Phnom Penh. For once Rahul had, at least, been realistic about the time it would take them to go through the UK adoption route and called in his Cambodian contacts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The air was a thick mix of jasmine, motorbike exhaust and hope as they entered the raised bamboo structure to meet the director. Leela felt herself come alive as she crouched on the dusty floor, engaging with the shiny faced toddlers who laughed gleefully but didn\u2019t know how to play with the toys she offered them. What a life we could give them, she whispered to Rahul.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI just don\u2019t think I can do it. They don\u2019t even look like us\u201d muttered Rahul avoiding eye contact back at their hostel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Leela was shocked by her sudden clarity. At once she knew she could<\/em> be with those children. If not as a mother, then as a carer, like the Australian support worker they had met at the orphanage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Rahul looked on dumbfounded as she silently packed her bag and walked out of their room, and life, together. His eyes watered as recalled the lines Leela had recited in the darkest of times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is the way the world ends \/ This is the way the world ends \/ Not with a bang but a whimper.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Leela stared at the white plastic stick, silently begging the Hindu goddess of fertility for two blue lines. But once again, Parvati was not playing. Leela pulled down the waistband of her jeans examining her pockmarked belly. 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