Riddhi Naik
Bambolim, India

It was just another day in medical school. I was posted in the postnatal ward on a bright, sunny March morning. The ward was filled with young mothers full of hope and love for their newborns. Spring was in full bloom- both inside and outside the wards. Optimism surrounded me everywhere, and I was filled with cheer. I went to the bed I was allotted, bed four. 

The bed was empty. But the patient’s belongings were kept by the bedside, so I waited there for a while. The patient arrived shortly after. She looked undernourished and seemed to be in her late twenties. I introduced myself and began taking her history. She was twenty-three years old and worked as a laundrywoman. She had delivered her third child, a son, just two days earlier, and he was still in intensive care. After asking a few other details, I asked her when she had got married. She replied, “In 2013.” It was 2025 then. My brain froze; chills ran through my spine as I had the cold realization that she had been married off when she was only eleven years old. She was a child bride in modern India. 

Coming from an urban area with a very educated and westernized society in Goa, I could not believe that such practices were still going on and that no authority was protecting young girls. She was also just two years older than I but looked so grown up and tested by life. When I asked her about her child marriage, she replied that people used to get married early. She said this in a most innocent way, as if we did not belong to the same generation. While I was busy participating in art competitions at my school and dreaming of living a life pursuing artistic ventures in Goa, she had her life tied to an eleven-year-old boy in a small village in Uttar Pradesh. She had to bear family responsibilities as a literal eleven-year-old child. Not only was she denied the chance to dream, but she was also denied basic education and hence better employment opportunities. Had she been born in my situation, she would have had a childhood where she could have played, daydreamed, and lived as a happy, carefree child. Instead, child marriage doomed her to a lifelong struggle for existence. On the other hand, all my childhood privileges have led me to stand in front of her as a student doctor, shocked by her tragedy.

I asked her about her previous pregnancies. She had her first baby by C-section when she was fourteen years old . At seventeen, she had her second baby, also by C-section. Devastatingly, her second baby died on the day it was born. It had ectopia cordis- a condition where the heart is located outside the chest cavity. Later, at nineteen, she underwent medical termination of pregnancy. Now, at twenty-three years of age, had given birth to another baby by C-section. This was a high-risk baby due to low birth weight and meningitis. 

She told me her entire life story in fifteen minutes with a straightforward face, as though she were telling me what she ate for breakfast. She did not ask for pity from me, nor did she feel any pity for herself. She had accepted her fate, and like a strong warrior, she was fighting her life circumstances, thinking it was very normal to go through all this and that this was life, to stay strong for her baby and hope that tomorrow would be better. I had heard the quote, “God gives his toughest battles to his strongest soldiers”, many times before. I cannot think of a better person as an epitome for this quote. She has to take care of the baby and herself because her extended family lives far away in another state, while her husband works to provide for them. 

It has been more than a year since I met her, and I cannot help but think of her in times when my life feels challenging and when I see another woman struggling to earn a living with her children by her side. I met her only once, and yet she left a greater impact on me than most people in my community. Her strength and resilience inspire me to never lose hope and keep working towards my goals. I realized how so much of my normal life is a privilege and how much I sometimes exaggerate the size of the hurdles in my life.

I hope that someday our society will reach a point where no girl must go through such a heavy amount of trauma. I dream of a society where every girl can dare to have a dream and pursue it. I dream of living in a country where no place is running on a backward, destructive timeline.

Anonymity- All information is stated in a way that keeps the patient anonymous. Patients’ locations and event dates have been modified for this purpose.