Manjula Thakore, a house help, points to the house’s tiled floor and marble kitchen. All this came for Rs 2.50 lakh, a sum she could raise only because about a year back she decided to be a surrogate to a couple from Jammu.

“The rent of our earlier house was killing us. We had no savings. Then I heard from a friend about couples looking for women to carry their children and paying Rs 2 lakh for it. I had had three children. I thought what’s wrong with one more if it gets me a house?” says Manjula.

Says Munna Thakore, a carpenter and Manjula’s husband: “If there was any other way, I would have objected to my wife doing this. But it seemed a good thing to do. The couple got two baby girls and we got a house.”

At the moment there are around 35-40 women here pregnant with children of other couples. They are kept in two houses, called “surrogate bungalows” locally. Dr Nayna Patel of Akanksha Clinic screens them herself, as well as handles the paperwork and legal formalities.

However, severing all emotional and physical connect with a child after its birth, as specified under the “contract”, is not easy, admits Manjula. But now she is reconciled: “It was part of the deal. It was their children. So there was nothing for me to do.”

Munna too admits to a moment of indecision after the birth. “Manjula gave birth to twin girls. I have three sons and, for a moment, I thought if only I could keep the girls,” he says. “But then we needed the house.”

Another symbol of the family’s affluence is the digital camera that Manjula now brings, to zoom to the image of a woman living in a thatched-roof house, covered with plastic sheets. “Look at this woman,” she says animatedly. “How much does she earn? She would never dream of owning her own house. She now wants to become a surrogate. It will change her life.”

But both Manjula and Munna say it was an act born out of compulsion. Will they do it again? “No, never, we already have the house,” comes the reply.