That Little Baby Girl In A Gum Boot

My stories about my mother will never end, till I come to an end. On this Women’s Day, let me tell you a story about her which I don’t think many will not believe easily.

It happened 60 years ago. We were living as I have said many times in a hut built by my mother and the hut she built could sometimes have its roof fly especially when there was heavy rain and lightning - Ali Peter John

at Ali Peter John book launch in Mumbai on 28th Dec 2014 shown to user

It was on one such stormy night when my mother was fighting her one- woman battle in the storm to keep the roof of her house in place that a couple of bhaiyyas from UP ( men who worked in a company called The Malleable Iron and Steel Company and were paid a common salary of one rupee per day) had come looking for my mother and they had a baby who must been just born in the arms of one of the bhaiyyas.

My mother got down from the roof to see what had happened as was her habit whenever she found anything disturbing or scary happening.

She took the baby in her arms and first cleaned the baby up and then asked the men what had happened.

The oldest of the men told her that they had just finished their last shift at 12 midnight and were going home which was a large slum which was where now the International Airport of Mumbai is today.

They were singing their native songs when they suddenly heard the sound of a little baby crying.

They rushed to find out where the crying of the baby was coming from. They finally had found a new born baby girl placed inside a black gum boot and abandoned between two large water pipes on what is now the Marol Naka area.

They were bewildered and talked about whether to take the baby to a hospital, complain to the police or ask for help from people who were still walking around.

Till one of them thought that it would be best to take baby to “Mary Aunty’s House” ( my mother’s house) because they knew that it was only my mother who could do something to save the baby.

My mother offered them hot cups of tea as she kept nursing the baby and then asked the bhaiyyas to go home and sleep as they had to wake up to do other jobs like selling peanuts and bananas on the streets as they felt they could not live on their salary of one rupee a day.

That whole night my mother kept looking after the baby and taking all the care to see that nothing went wrong with her.

The next morning she dressed up the baby in a bedsheet and took the baby to the St. Catharine’s Home in Andheri West, the same orphanage where she had spent the first 20 years of her life as an orphan even though she had her parents, seven sisters and four brothers (don’t ask me why because I had never asked her questions about her family) and where she she had found a man who was going to change her life. And that man was my father, Haroon Ali.

She got the baby admitted to the nursing home for children at the orphanage and requested all the nuns who were her friends to look after the baby about whose parents no one knew a thing.

My mother’s constant request to the nuns was to not make it a police case. My mother may have been entirely uneducated, but she was more knowledgeable about the world and its ways than all the learned and self-proclaimed wise men I have seen and known.

She visited the orphanage every day to see how the baby was progressing and stopped going regularly only after three months. She had given the baby her own name, Mary, I still cant understand why.

Years passed, my mother was in a lot of tension because she had made it big in her own way and was tired about her life which she felt was affecting her three sons.

One afternoon, she received a kind of invitation and she was surprised as she had not received an invitation in a long time.

I had to read out the invitation to her and her face kept brightening up. It was an invitation to the wedding of that baby the bhaiyyas had found in a gum boot (and the name of the bride was still Mary) and she had saved, without taking any credit for it.

Main jaantaa thaa maa ki tum khudaa se bhi mahaan thi, Lekin jab bhi mujhe tumhaari yaad aati hai, khudaa mujhe aaj bhi tumse chotaa hi lagtaa hai.