On July 31st the narrator gets to know that she is pregnant. Maji, who has once been a midwife, tells her that she can see it.
When the two women talk about being pregnant, Maji asks the narrator whether she needs some help in this situation. By this she doesn’t only want to help her mentally but also physically – she asks her if she wants to abort the baby.
According to Maji there are many abortions in India due to the fact that this is very often the only way how the women can be saved from “dishonour and suffering” (p. 129, l. 9). Because Maji talks so open minded about abortions it seems to me that it is a common thing in India, not just for her as a midwife, but for everybody. As she said before there is often no other choice for pregnant women. They have to suffer from the pregnancy due to the bad infrastructure and the bad state of their medical scheme. Probably the women would also suffer from the people’s gossip. I think it is very rarely that Indian women get a baby although they aren’t married. What makes the situation even worse for Inder Lal and the narrator is that he is still married and already has children with his wife. I think there could be many people who point at them in the streets, saying “Look, this is the British woman who has stolen Ritu’s husband and now she is pregnant from him.”
In this aspect we can see a difference between European and Indian society. On one hand Indians don’t accept misbegotten children, Europeans on the other hand do accept them and their parents.
The narrator, however, doesn’t really think about her own situation when Maji tells her about abortions. She is only interested in the stories because they are exciting to her. I think she didn’t realise so far that she is pregnant from an Indian and so she doesn’t think about the consequences.
