Erumeli: When the floodwater was rising in her hilly village amid heavy downpours, Rajani Anish was writhing in labour pain. The doctor had marked August 29 as Rajani’s likely delivery date, but this exigency cropped up nine days earlier.
In fact, the young woman’s family had plans to admit her to hospital on August 20, but incessant rains upset their whole schedule. It had been nonstop downpours from August 15, forcing Rajani’s parents Reji and Rosamma to delay taking her to the Taluk Hospital at Ranni, which is the native place of the woman’s husband.
As rain battered their locality, Angel Valley, and marooned their village near this town of Kottayam district, Rajani began to develop breathing problems and back pain associated with advanced pregnancy. Her parents got worried, and the family’s neighbours found no way they could help amid neck-deep water around. Power went off and mobile phones began losing range as well as charge.
As the village was reported cut off, Revenue officials assured the family that the Navy was expected to rescue them in a helicopter. A heavily pregnant Rajani, anxious about her foetus, got tensed up on knowing that she has to scale up on to the chopper that was to come for her help. In that, Rajani lost consciousness and fell on her back, injuring her head. She was motionless when the carrier picked her up. Inside the chopper was an earnest medical doctor beside Rajani’s mother who was wailing.
The helicopter then flew to Kanjirappally, 10 km northwest. There, the carrier landed at the Amal Jyothi College of Engineering. A huge crowd had gathered around the ground, eager to see a helicopter descending on to their place for the first time ever.
Barely 25 km south of Kanjirappally in neighbouring Pathanamthitta district’s Ranni, Rajani’s husband Anish was himself trapped in the floods around his house. Failed signals ensured the couple couldn't talk to each other over phone. Finally, it was on August 19, when waters had begun to recede, that the couple reunited.
Rajani spent the next four days as well at the Kanjirappally hospital. On August 23, she was shifted to the Medical College Hospital in Kottayam, 38 km west. There, the next day, she delivered the child, spreading relief and joy across both the families, their relatives and friends. They named him Abhin, as the couple had decided it in advance.
Rajani doesn't want to remember the trauma she underwent during one round of labour pain. She could be Kerala’s first woman to have delivered a child after being airlifted, but Rajani prefers to give no importance to that distinction. In any case, she was unconscious at one stage of that phase — and it’s a blessing in disguise, the woman believes, as memories from those the difficult moments cannot revisit her.
