The outdoor restaurant was right across from the beach in Daman, India.  Palms lined the edge of the elegant pavilion, where neatly dressed waiters balanced platters of chicken vindaloo and fish masala.  Our table was along the edge of the restaurant, and right outside of it was a busy street with a wide ditch running along the entire length of it. My little 1-year old sat with us at the table on a pile of cushions in place of a high chair.  She amused herself by carefully taking apart the sugar packets and I was impatient to get my lunch.

Somewhere we could hear a baby crying, but looking around I could not see any baby. I noticed that there was a long row of brightly dressed women in saris working in the ditch.  This is one of the more surprising things about India, how even the poorest women doing harsh manual labour are  elegantly dressed in a swathe of colourfully printed acrylic saris. The small women were digging heavy rocks out of the holes. It looked like work that no one would do in Germany or has done in half a century.  There are machines for this in our countries, but in India it is just  a normal job.

Our food finally arrived, the hottest fish masala yet. Even our baby developed a taste for it, mixed with a bit of rice and yoghurt.  Ripping apart tufts of hot fluffy naan, she glowed with happiness.  I heard the baby crying again.  I glanced again over to the women working only a few metres from where we were sitting.  One of them kept looking down and didn't seem to be moving any rocks. I looked closer. And then I saw it. The woman had her newborn tied into a makeshift sling. She was trying to calm the baby down while at the same time hiding it with the long end of her sari. It was obvious she was trying to hide the baby from her overseer. Maybe she would have lost her job if they knew she had a baby with her?

No longer hungry, I looked at my happy little girl and felt like crying.  How hard those first months with my own newborn had been, when I was still recovering from a difficult birth and my husband was back at work.  How tiring it all was for me, getting used to the everyday routine of changing, nursing, calming.... how hard it was just learning to be a mother.  If I had not had the support of an excellent midwife, a caring husband and other mothers close to me I don't know how I would have managed.  I remember the pregnancy class, the post-pardom class, the babywearing and cloth diapering sessions.  And the mummy forums online and all of the books I read. And still the beginning was very difficult for me. I feel comfortable saying that.

When we got up to leave we left the restaurant by the side entrance where we had to cross the ditch on some kind of plank.  I hoped the woman might look up and I could at least say hello or give her something but she was desperately trying to quiet the baby, who was now hysterical. It looked like she was trying to nurse her in the ditch.  We moved on and when we returned the next day, the women were gone.

It was a lasting impression.  I usually think of natural mothering and babywearing as a choice, as a  conscious way that we as mothers choose to be close to and nurture our little ones.  Of course it is wonderful to carry a baby on my breast while I tend to my housework, or for enjoying the closeness with her while I walk out in nature, unencumbered by a pram.  And when I think of babywearing around the world, I love to hear the stories of the women in Africa or Latin America or other traditional cultures, how they confidently carry their babies in all kinds of situations. How much there is to learn from them!

And yet this mother in Daman, this was different.  This was desperation and utter poverty that was forcing such a young mother into that ditch.  The sling she used was just a rag tied in a knot. No babywearing expert ever showed her how to do it, no midwife helped her to latch on, and no one was there to take her place so she could rest with her newborn.  In India, labour like this is paid only around Rs. 60 a day, around 1Éuro.  It is usually only performed by the lowest castes of all.  It turns out that babywearing is a caste issue, too. Only these poorest women of the lowest cast will ever tie a baby onto their backs.  Since that day in Daman I have seen numerous women, most of them begging in the streets with babies in makeshift slings in India.  One of our upper class friends in Ahmedabad explained it to me: well situated families have no need to carry their babies in slings. There are always enough relatives around who will be willing to carry the baby in their arms through the hectic Indian streets.  Prams are not practical in India, so the babies are simply carried by their relatives. 

I wonder what this woman would have thought of all the care we have here, the classes, the support of the mothering community.  What would she have thought about my problems as a new mother?  And organic clothing? And the “right” way to wear a baby? It really puts it all into perspective, doesn't it?

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