Before she pressed her inked thumb on the contract agreement,they had made Ramilaben Solanki understand that she is a womb. No more,no less. They had told her that the baby would be no part of her flesh and blood. That she was its shell,only a shell. But sitting in the dark of her single-room,tin-roofed hovelhome to nine more people in her extended familythis 27-year-old domestic help in Gujarats Anand is still fighting to come to terms with herself. She thinks that the pink infant with the golden hair and light brown eyes of his American father,the one she bore and delivered,had come of her. Not through her. For seven days and nights after,until the American couple from Wisconsin,USwhose sperm,ovum and money helped make her babyflew in,Ramila had fed him her milk,sung him to sleep. She had also whispered in his ears that he is Deep,younger brother to her own five-year-old daughter,Deepali. They arrived a week after. They came near my bed,asked through a doctor if I would let them hold the baby. I always knew that Deep would not remain with me,but I wept when the woman took out a bottle and fed him. He had known only my milk till then, Ramila mumbled through tears. The third day,she woke up from a midnoon nap to find the infant missing. The hospital told her that the Americans had flown away with the baby. Their baby,they reminded her. What remained with her were a few badly done photos of the newborn baby and a scrap of paper on which the Americans had scribbled their address,phone numbers and email ID,which she cannot read anyway. That,and an extra one-and-a-half lakh rupees that they gratefully tipped her with,for the trouble. It all began when a neighbour working as a help in Dr Nayna Patels Akanksha Infertility Clinic in Anand told her how she could earn some money for her little daughters sake if she agreed to be a surrogate mother. A school dropout who was married off at 19 and became a mother before she turned 22,Ramila had separated from her wayward,unemployed husband soon after. It did not take her long to agree. Ramilas jobless father had told her to do it for her daughter Deepalis sake since what she brought in as a domestic help was just not enough. They took her to the hospital,ran her through many tests,gave her a contract to sign for Rs 2.5 lakh,all inclusive. They then implanted in her womb the embryo fused from the Americans sperm and ova,and shifted her to a three-room prenatal confinement home in distant Nadiad,away from her family. There were 17 other women there,all of them pregnant with someones baby,mostly of foreigners,like me. We were not allowed to go home,told to stay there until we delivered. All 18 of us in those three rooms,there was barely enough space to walk around. It was hard,but we needed the money, recalls Ramila. The women were from some of Gujarats poorest neighbourhoods,many of them Dalits and of other lower castes. Every morning,doctors and nurses would come and look us up,often take our blood,put us through tests,give us medicines. Our husbands were allowed to visit us once every week,with our children. We were paid Rs 4,000 a month and the men came only to take away that money,or whatever we were left with after we had spent on food. Ramilas husband didnt come to meet her,though. He wasnt told about her surrogacy. I had told his family that I was going away to Delhi for 10 months to work in a house there. If I had told them the truth,they would have taken away all the money I was trying to earn for my daughter, she says. There was a bigger threat too: My husband would have made me go for many more surrogacies if he knew there was money to be made. One of Ramilas younger sistersshe has five sisters and a brother,who drives an autorickshawwould bring her daughter Deepali to her in Nadiad every weekend. My daughter would look at my growing tummy and ask when she would get to see her little brother. It used to scare me,pain me. I had to tell her he will be sent to a hostel as soon as he is born,and will come back to us only after he grows up. She still keeps asking if we can go and see him in the hostel. In sync with local traditions where a full pregnancy calls for a community celebration,the hospital sponsors the shrimant thats done during the seventh month of the pregnancy. Ramila has saved photos of that little ritual in the Nadiad pre-natal confinement home,the only time she got to wear an expensive saree. She delivered her surrogate baby last December and a week after,the infant was gone. He still comes to me in my sleep,my son. He would be one year old now and must be learning to walk,in America. I wish I could see at least a photo,just one photo, Ramila weeps,showing the scrap of paper that she has securely kept wrapped in three plastic pouches,in the only almirah in her one-room homethe one that the Americans had scribbled their email address and phone number on. I know no English and cannot telephone them. The home I work in has a computer and the saheb there says he will contact them and tell them in English whatever I want to say. But I am scared they might refuse,I dont know what to do. A local studio is touching up the babys photo that was taken soon after he was born,for her to keep. With the money she earnedshe is now left with about Rs 3 lakhthe first thing Ramila did was to pay a hefty fee and enroll her daughter in a local English medium school. I want her to learn,and not be like me. I want to give her everything I can, she says. Ramila is also seeking a divorce from her separated husband,who still has no clue about what she has been through. Next on her wishlist is a small home,for the two of them. But a home here would cost at least Rs 5 lakh unless I move to a distant place,but then my daughter will not be able to go to school. So Ramila is now preparing to lend her womb again and bargain hard. This time,I am asking for Rs 5 lakh because I am too weak to keep doing it many more times. I have told the hospital that I am ready if there are people willing to pay, she says. My daughter is too small but I know she will ask me about this some day. I keep telling her that whatever I do is for her and I have no other way. She will understand some day. Surrogacy: the grey areas In the absence of a law,the contract that the surrogate mother enters into is what guides surrogacy in India Unknown or not to Ramila Solanki,the agreement that she signed before mothering the baby for the Americans has a clause: that she would never,ever,contact the child she delivered for them. Since Parliament is yet to pass the Bill that is hoped to clamp the much awaited ethical-legal regulatory frame on surrogacy,it is only such contracts between the surrogate mother and the couple using her services that guide surrogacy. Dr Nayna Patel,whose hospital facilitated and carried out Ramilas surrogacy,says she does not recall the specifics of her case. The baby she delivered is one of the nearly 200 surrogates that her hospital has so far delivered. We are not in the business of renting wombs,a term tossed around by the media (which) implies that we care nothing for the rest of the woman that a body part could be so easily outsourced. Rather,we provide a legitimate service to those in need,whether it is the couple who desperately wants a child,or the woman who wishes to change her circumstances,to educate her children or build a house or pay off debts. And we look after the whole person,her physical needs and beyond claims her hospitals website. We even help to ensure that the money they earn from being surrogate mothers is invested wisely for their own future, Dr Patel adds. But the only rule to guide surrogacy,as it stands,is that there are no enforceable rules. Dr Pankaj Desai,one of the 15 experts who helped prepare the draft Bill,believes it may be tabled in Parliament anytime soon. There are some apprehensions about its final shape,though. The legislation should not put unnecessary hindrances in the way of NRIs and foreign nationals wanting to have a baby, argued a doctor not wanting to be named,referring to last months episode in Anand involving a German couple who had surrogate baby twins delivered for them and how that put them in a legal tangle. This was after the Ahmedabad passport office refused Indian passports to the babies. That left the infants unable to leave the country,and facing the prospect of being stateless since Germany does not recognise surrogacy for its citizenship,either. The Supreme Courts observation in this case last week,after the Union Government opposed the Gujarat High Court order to give them the passports,was telling: Should we treat children born out of surrogacy as commodities? it asked,adding,Statelessness cannot be clamped upon the children. There must be some mechanism by which they get citizenship of some country. There are many more grey areas,in cases such as when a grandmother became a surrogate mother for her own childless daughterin Anand,againa year ago,and the travails of Japanese doctor Ifukum Yamada after his wife refused to accept their 13-day-old surrogate baby. The authorities could not issue a passport without the childs mothers name on it. It was months before the Japanese Government finally allowed the child to be taken there. Above all,there is also that primary,but less asked,question: Is lending a womb for cash something that needs only some legal regulation of its conduct,especially on a large commercial scale?
