A Baby in a Backpack to Bhutan: An Australian Family in the Land of the Thunder Dragon

by Bunty Avieson

  I email all the test results to my doctor; he emails back that I’m anaemic and should start iron tablets. I stop sucking in my belly when I’m naked and Mal, with that male candour that is so adorable, expresses surprise that I look pregnant so soon. I tell him that it’s a known medical fact that within days of conception a substantial layer of fat is deposited across the mother’s belly to keep the embryo warm. Bless him, he believes me.

  A few weeks later we’re in Paris and go for dinner at the tres chic and ultra-cool Buddha Bar. To mark the end of the risk-filled first trimester I lash out and have a sip of red wine then immediately want to throw up.

  In London, to visit insurance giant Lloyd’s for research on my new book, we have the neuchal translucency ultrasound and the baby waves at us. A heart-stopping moment. In London’s Harley Street we meet a colleague of my Sydney doctor, and he explains that the results of the ultrasound are positive. Our odds of producing a Down Syndrome baby given my age just improved from one in thirty-three to one in a hundred. He compares it to the likelihood of being killed on the motorway versus crashing in a plane. It’s supposed to be good news but now I’m too scared to get on the next day’s flight to America. I spend the trip with my hands wrapped around my belly, just in case.

  In New York I have a meeting with a high-powered publisher at St Martin’s Press. Standing on Fifth Avenue looking up I realise the office is in the Flat Iron Building, the oldest skyscraper in America and one of the most famous in the world. I’m sure I’ve seen its distinctive triangular shape in the opening credits for Friends. I’m agog. The publisher’s office, when I finally find it, is in the pointy end with a view straight up Broadway.

  As I take a seat I’m shaking but can’t tell whether it is with awe, the effort of not throwing up, or the fact that I desperately need the loo again. It’s been twelve minutes since my last visit and I fear the consequences if I don’t go again soon.

  The publisher tells me she loved my book Apartment 255, a dark and twisted thriller set in Sydney, but it disturbed her so much that she couldn’t finish it and instead passed it over to three of her editors for appraisal, two of whom are sitting in her office, staring at me suspiciously. ‘I was shocked,’ says a sweet-looking woman called Hope. ‘I was still thinking about it on Tuesday,’ adds a man in a suit, leaning away from me as if he fears I may pull out a knife at any moment.

  I try to respond but everything is coming to me through a hormonal fog. They are speaking so fast, firing so many questions, that I feel like a rabbit in the headlights, frozen and unable to move (partly because I fear my bladder may leak). I feel limp and exhausted, like I’ve lost all my stuffing. It’s a combination of the heat, my anaemia and the fact that today I’m also making two new little kidneys, or so the pregnancy book says.

  I can tell that I’m not what they were expecting – maybe it’s the maternity twin-set I bought hurriedly for the occasion – and by the time I leave they no longer look fearful that I am some kind of psycho bunny-boiler. Instead they seem concerned that I won’t manage to find my way out of the building.

  ‘Is there someone we can call?’ they offer politely. Fortunately Mal is hovering about outside to escort me and my hormones home.

  We are staying in New York with some Australian friends who are also expecting a baby, and the wife passes on some useful tips gleaned from a book written in the ’50s and given to her by her southern belle secretary. It recommends during pregnancy cutting back martini consumption to just two or three each evening, and to combat morning sickness, it suggests smoking a cigarette before you get out of bed. Just talking about it makes us both race to the bathroom.

  Then it is on to Canada where, finally, I blossom. My skin really does glow, just like it says in the book. My energy levels rocket and the nausea passes. It’s obvious now that I’m pregnant and people offer all sorts of advice – the only helpful bit being that we should try to get an audience with a renowned female Tibetan lama who lives in Vancouver. She has five children, having popped each one out in just two hours apiece while she continued weaving.

  I get very excited and decide that I want to do it that way. I tell Mal I cannot possibly face childbirth without talking to this woman. Through the help of one of her students, who is a friend of Mal’s, we are invited for tea.

  Jetsun Kushok is a very rare creature – a realised female master of Tibetan Buddhism. She understands the nature of reality in a way that I can’t even begin to perceive and has dedicated her life – and the next, and every one after that – to helping the rest of us ‘get it’. Her brother is Sakya Trizin, the leader of the Sakya School of Buddhism and in some ways equal in standing to the Dalai Lama. Jetsun is undoubtedly a big kahuna in the Buddhist scheme of things but even more importantly, to my self-centred impure way of thinking, she’s someone who might just be able to give me a couple of really helpful pointers, particularly on how to avoid pain. I’m thinking the tantric inner secrets of birth. Woman to woman.

  I decide it might be best if Mal doesn’t sit in, and try to explain this to him in the car on the way to her home by alluding vaguely to ‘secret women’s business’, raising my eyebrows and nodding a lot. He looks at me with a nervous expression I’m coming to know well: Is this another hormone moment? What is the safest answer here?

  Jetsun Kushok is a tiny, pragmatic woman who lives without airs and graces in a simple bungalow in suburban Vancouver with her husband, children and grandchildren. She sleeps only a few hours a night and fulfils an exhausting itinerary, criss-crossing the globe to teach her many students.

  Perched daintily on the edge of an armchair offering more tea, she could be any suburban grandmother. Almost. There is about her a simplicity and calmness that is hard to identify and impossible to resist. Her face is youthful and her eyes full of compassion. When we tell her I’m pregnant, she looks at me in such an eerie way I feel like she is seeing right into my belly.

  ‘Aaah,’ she says with a mysterious smile. And nods. I nod too. I’ve never been backward in coming forward but find myself completely gobsmacked and cannot think of a thing to say. Mal, thank God he is here, takes over, explaining that we would welcome any advice on pregnancy and childbirth.

  She tells me to rub sesame oil on my belly and back twice a week, to walk a lot, and avoid goat and pork. Chicken, beef and lamb are okay. I need to strengthen my kidneys in preparation for the birth. Very important.

  During the birth she says to avoid cold or iced drinks but sip tea or water at room temperature or above. Drinking cold things gives the baby a shock, which will cause it to retract and slow things down, she explains, demonstrating by wrapping her arms around herself and shivering.

  After the birth she recommends lying in bed on my side to allow the bones to contract naturally, and to avoid all exercise. In Tibet, women take to their bed for weeks, while their extended family looks after them. She also says to avoid alcohol and eat just smooth soups that won’t tax the body in digestion.

  Mal is writing down all this wonderful practical advice. Finally, I find the courage to ask the big one. How do I get around the pain thing? I understand her births were all quick and relatively painless, and, well, I’d rather like one of those myself . . .

  She smiles, her eyes full of wisdom and compassion, then delivers the blow. ‘That all depends on your karma,’ she says.

  Damn. No short cuts here. My karma is undoubtedly light years away from hers. And it’s a bit late to try to notch up brownie points now.

  I kneel on the carpet for a blessing and she puts her hands on my head and stomach. It is unaccountably moving and warmth spreads through every nerve and muscle. When Mal and I are safely alone in the car again, I burst into tears.

  ‘Happy tears?’ he asks, for the umpteenth time.

  ‘Oh yes,’ I say, feeling more excited, more scared and like reinforcements have just arrived for that army of hormones still marching through my bloodstream.

  A few months later in Sydney my waters brea
k but it is three days before a drug-induced labour really gets going. When the wall of pain hits, it is so fierce that I take all the drugs on offer. (I decide that at least my karma is good enough that I’m giving birth where such things are available.)

  As the sun sets on 11 February 2002, we finally get to meet the most gorgeous little girl in the world. She is sporting a crop of vivid red hair that stands straight up, as if she’s just put her finger in an electric socket. She looks up at us with the most enormous and luminous blue eyes. Mal and I both fall hopelessly in love with her.

  Very soon we are feeling like the cleverest people in the world. This parenthood thing isn’t going to slow us down. Au contraire. Having little Miss Kathryn Rose will just make it all the more fun, we tell each other, with all the bravado and naivety of new parents. We buy a high-tech backpack that converts into a pram and when she’s just three months old, we get her a passport of her own. She’ll be needing it.

  We ignore all the tut-tuts and unhelpful advice, and pack her along with our laptops, a suitcase of nappies, a dictionary, thesaurus and a Spot the Dog book, and head off to India, where the next stage of Mal’s building project is about to begin. That’s our life and she just became a most glorious and welcome part of it. We’ll just have to figure it out as we go.

  3

  The Muncles

  MAY 2002

  I pick up an empty plastic bottle of Bisleri water and lick the label. Urrgh. It tastes of dirt and dust. For all I know, this bottle rolled along the streets of Old Delhi on its way here to Bir and is carrying ghastly third-world diseases capable of liquifying all my internal organs, or worse. I lick it again.

  I figure there’s no time to waste. Whatever germs are on that label I want them in my bloodstream as quickly as possible. I’ve got to get started on making their antibodies. It’s in the book lying by my bedside.

  Baby Love by Sydney nurse Robin Barker is a hefty tome and weighs more than all my clothes, but there is no way I was bringing our baffling little five-kilo bundle to one of the most germ-ridden corners of the world without it. On page 64 it says that breastmilk contains antibodies to protect babies from illness. Kathryn, three months old, just licked the label and that’s why I’m doing the same, seeking out whatever germs might be lurking there unseen.

  During the past few weeks that we’ve been back in India, Mal and I have been vigilant about what she puts in her mouth, sterilising her four dummies in boiling water every evening and constantly wiping her hands with Dettol wipes. The moment my back is turned, Kathryn picks up the first thing she can reach and licks it.

  Maybe my theory works, and I make the necessary antibodies, or maybe it doesn’t need to. Whatever the case, she stays healthy. I’m not so lucky.

  A few days later I find my gut is twisting and groaning, like I have razorblades slicing through my belly. The bout of dysentery isn’t as bad as it could be but the timing couldn’t be worse. The loo in our bathroom is blocked and it’s a five-minute trek from my bed down a flight of stairs, out into the main street, over the sleeping stray dogs, through the queue of Tibetan monks outside the deaf-mute Indian’s telephone shop, to get to a working toilet.

  I can’t say I wasn’t warned. From the moment Kathryn was born, people had been full of advice, mostly horror stories about what happens to babies taken outside the country. We always knew we would be bringing her to India as soon as possible, it just seemed to take everyone else a while to cotton on.

  When she was less than twenty-four hours old I sought guidance from the paediatrician who popped his head into my hospital room. ‘How old should she be before we take her to India?’ I asked.

  ‘Twenty-one.’

  ‘Months?’

  ‘No, years.’

  ‘But her father works there.’

  ‘Then tell him to come home and visit,’ he replied.

  If I hadn’t been still weak from labour I would have decked him.

  ‘It’s not that I don’t agree with parents taking children travelling,’ he added helpfully. ‘I took my son to Aspen when he was fourteen. But India has germs. Best you don’t go there.’

  Time for a new doctor – one who spent less time skiing in Aspen and more time in the real world, or third world, dealing with germs.

  It took some searching but I finally found a wonderful kindly paediatrician who had worked in South America. In two hour-long appointments he gave Mal and I a crash course in what to look for, what to do, what to take and when to panic. Confident and happy that we could do this, Mal went on ahead. Kathryn and I would meet up with him in Delhi in five weeks.

  After he had gone I did all the paperwork, including signing a statutory declaration at the Indian embassy in Sydney, stating that my baby’s father didn’t object to me taking her out of the country. I sobbed with Kathryn through all her shots and, most important of all, made sure she didn’t forget her father. I printed a life-size photo of Mal’s face and glued it to a ruler. Daddy-on-a-stick became Kathryn’s constant companion. I also filled a tape with Mal’s voice crooning and saved two of his smelly T-shirts for her to wear. Her senses were filled with Daddy – sight, sound and smell. Except for the lack of a body, I doubt she noticed he was gone.

  I tried to prepare her for ‘change’ by putting her to sleep in different rooms of our apartment, moving her pram from the kitchen to the bathroom, wedging it in our miniscule hallway and then outside on the balcony with the birds – Indian mynahs – to serenade her while she slept.

  It worked and she made the transition beautifully. From Sydney in winter to India in summer during a heatwave. And she registered no shock that Daddy suddenly had legs. When Mal took her from my arms at Delhi Airport, she snuggled into his neck as if they had never been apart.

  We stayed just two days in Delhi before heading to Bir, which was two days too long. I’ve tried to like the city but I can’t. I hate it. It is the armpit of the earth. And even worse with a baby.

  The pollution in summer feels like a dirty, wet towel on the skin. The rancid smell and taste of the air makes me want to vomit. But it is the frustrations of daily life that really would send me insane if I ever had to spend too long here.

  Mal has a room in the Siddhartha’s Intent offices situated in a nice middle-class enclave in western Delhi. The whole suburb, with thousands of residences and businesses, has been without a working telephone for three months. One night someone dug up all the copper wiring and stole it to resell on the black market. After three agonising months, with letters in the newspapers complaining about businesses going broke, the copper has been replaced but still the telephones don’t work. It takes a series of bribes to the linesmen in each area to get the telephones ‘reconnected’. At every level of management they are breathtakingly obvious about seeking bribes to do the jobs they are paid to do.

  Delhi is so overcrowded and under-resourced that there is not enough electricity to go around. The authorities counter this by cutting the supply to different parts of the city for an indeterminate amount of time – which means at some point during the day the air-conditioning won’t work.

  With an outside temperature of 47 degrees it didn’t take long for the room to heat up and become unbearable, but the real torture was not knowing when it would come back on.

  As long as the air-conditioning in Mal’s room was running, Kathryn was happy. When it went off we draped her with wet hankies, anxiously trying not to let her overheat but fearful we might overdo it and she would catch a chill. It was a fine balance. One time when it looked like she was becoming distressed, she and I spent the afternoon in the blissfully cool lobby of a five-star hotel, enjoying the passing parade of beautiful rich Indian women, looking glamorous in their saris. I must admit I was rather disappointed when Mal turned up to fetch us. The one advantage of the extreme heat was that it was too hot for mosquitoes.

  Nothing in India is simple. The most basic services that I take for granted at home are erratic here and governed by corruption. It seems t
hat no-one in power sticks to the rules or behaves with any degree of morality. I marvel at the good humour of the people who live in the midst of this chaos.

  The Siddhartha’s Intent house has a huge office on the ground floor and a rabbit warren of bedrooms on the two floors above. People come and go all the time, staying a month or a minute.

  There is a washing machine on the roof which everyone shares. It is a feature of summer in Delhi that the heat snap-dries your clothes. By the time you’ve pegged an item to the line it’s dry and you can take it down again. Leave it any longer and it starts to go brown.

  Bir is a complete contrast to Delhi – beautiful, with clean air and friendly, harmonious people. We are renting the same two rooms on the first floor above the telephone shop run by the deaf-mute Indian couple where, exactly one year ago, Kathryn was conceived in a rare moment of privacy. It wasn’t quite as hot then and the toilet worked.

  The Tibetan man who runs the guesthouse has called in the Indian plumbers to fix ours, and it seems to be taking forever. For the past three days, dozens of them have trooped in and out of our room, staring at me and Kathryn. More Indian men sidle along the window ledge, peering in on their way to inspect the bathroom pipes. Today they remove the whole toilet.

  I think the cast of thousands has less to do with the job and more to do with the opportunity of a peek at the white lady and her baby. Every nosy Indian man in Bir must have scored a glimpse by now so I’m hoping the bathroom will be ours again soon. And the Indians aren’t the only ones coming in every five minutes for a bit of a peek.

  The guesthouse manager’s wife is completely fascinated by Kathryn. Any time of the day or evening she will wander on in for a coo. The Tibetans don’t understand our western preoccupation with privacy so consequently we have none. Unless the door is locked, it is an open invitation for anyone to enter. The Tibetans wouldn’t be the least bit fussed if we wandered into their homes – hell, they’d make us tea and ask after the family.