Column

It’s well past midnight and strains of ‘Why this Kolaveri Di’ are pulsating through the room from a cellphone. Young girls in their early 20s, dressed in white uniforms are singing along with broad smiles and infectious giggles. While this scene could mirror almost any college campus in the country, these girls are actually highly trained nurses at the Neonatal ICU at Breach Candy Hospital. The music is being played for the tiny inhabitants of the NICU who live in incubators, can weigh as little as 600g and are on all kinds of life support. These babies are being given their 3am feed through tubes to the beat of Dhanush’s superhit song.

I was at the NICU as my second child was born early and was in the miserable situation of being sent home leaving my precious baby in the hospital incubator. The NICU could easily be one of the most depressing places on the planet, with terminally ill babies and new mothers unnaturally separated from their newborns, unable to nurse or even hold their babies for weeks on end. What makes it somewhat cheerful is the vibrancy these nurses infuse into the environment with their cheery smiles and dedication to the babies.

Over the course of my hospital stay, I spent much of my time with the other mothers in a little side room where we expressed milk to be fed to our babies. Naturally, as women bound by a common situation and one as emotional as this, we bonded and shared our fears and joys. Little developmental milestones — being allowed to hold your baby (an arduous process as the baby has to be disconnected from all monitors, wires and tubes); nursing your baby (not recommended too much as suckling causes the premature baby to expend too much energy); or the baby not needing to be on the CPAP (oxygen support) — would be cause for all of us to celebrate. Similarly, anxiety and fear laced the air in the room if one of our babies had to undergo a blood transfusion or lung or eye surgery that day.

And clearly we weren’t the only ones affected if a baby was critically ill. Anybody who tells me that children, even tiny ones can’t pick up tension and emotions in their environment, hasn’t been around several young babies at once. On a day when a baby was to undergo a surgery, all the other babies would be restless, colicky, and the crying from such under-developed lungs could deafen the onlooker.

Watching the courage and calm that some parents exude, when a long-awaited child fights daily battles for its life, is humbling. It makes you understand the lengths people will go to for their children when you see a couple sell their family home, take bank loans and put all their savings on the line, to do whatever it takes to keep their baby alive. I have seen a mother sit beside her tiny baby’s incubator, reciting the Gayatri Mantra over and over for 13 hours, the night before the infant was to undergo heart surgery. When my daughter was discharged after an emotionally exhausting two weeks, I realised that sometimes, in just 14 days life can teach you big lessons about what’s really important and worth prioritising.

It also makes you realise that there are still people in India who love what they do and do it with passion. While the medical staff is trained and paid to look after your child, they are not paid to cuddle, hold or sing to your baby. What makes these NICU nurses special is that they don’t just stop at deftly drawing blood from diminutive veins, they will also stop to coo at, and sing to your child. Which is why, I will always smile when I hear ‘Kolaveri Di’ remembering the angels in white singing it.

From writing for Newsweek in New York to DNA in Mumbai, writer and editor Rukhmini Punoose's current full-time employers are her 4-year-old son and month-old daughter.