That day I had gone to Mirza (some 6km from Borjhar airport) with my parents to see the ongoing construction of my father’s engineering college. While taking a stroll around the campus area I happened to meet Tupai Kalita, the supervisor at the site. As I was still chitchatting with him a young woman with a barely-one-month-old baby came to him to collect her daily wages.
Kalita took the baby in his arms and said, “She is Geeta (name changed) and her mother had bought her in just five hundred rupees when she was just 2 days old.” I was taken by shock when Bhashwati (name changed), the woman who had adopted the child, smiled at me and said, “Reeha was going to throw the baby into the river because she was not ready to bear the responsibility. She had become pregnant before marriage. So Reeha had decided to throw the baby away into the river. When I heard about this, I decided to take the baby from her. For this I had to give her five hundred rupees.”
After a while Bhashwati’s husband Heemanga (name changed) also joined in. Hemanga had been extremely happy to with the baby and even named her Geeta. Heemanga, who works as a seasonal labour, is financially not very stable but still he decided to adopt the baby. Heemanga told me, “I was very surprised to see a mother being so cruel to her own child. She even decided to kill the baby who has not even seen the world properly. Therefore, I decided to give my own name to this child and will soon send her to school when she grows up.”
It was so shocking for me to even know that this child had been sold away for five hundred rupees by her own mother, Reeha. It is only when this couple decided to take the baby to their own home, Reeha asked for money in exchange.
Such incidents may be common in our state, for all we know. Maybe we are unaware that such things happen, or maybe we are the least bothered. Money is of prime importance for people like Reeha, and for them life holds no meaning.