Ms. Ungleesh
This story is about the days when sex determination of fetuses by ultra-sound scanning was rampant in India and was not yet outlawed.
It was very common in North India, especially in the smaller mofussil towns, for families to use the services of ultrasound scanning centres to determine the sex of their unborn child. A female child would cause untold anxiety to wedded couples as it would mean that they had to make intense preparations for saving up substantial amounts of money and wealth to pay as dowry to get their daughters wedded. Male babies caused no such anxieties and were considered the harbingers of wealth and prosperity, besides being assured agents to lead its parents to heaven and salvation after their deaths – something which only male children could do.
In such circumstances female fetuses were rampantly aborted all over the Indian subcontinent leading to a rather unhealthy and precarious male:female sex ratios that finally led the Indian Government to ban the usage of sex determination of unborn babies.
It was under such circumstances that Ms. Ungleesh was born. Although the name, to those who are familiar with Hindu names, strongly suggests a male gender, it is actually the name of a girl. A rather uncommon name though! But how she came to be named so is a story of extraordinary and surprising awareness for a fetus within the womb of an anxious mother.
It is said that when the mother went to an ultrasound clinic for scanning, and while she was being scanned in the abdomen, the fetus had positioned its hand with its finger projecting strategically in such a position that the doctor had no doubts whatsoever that the fetus was indeed a male. The photograph of the scan was also provided and the doctor confidently showed the proud parents the evidences of the baby being a boy. The parents returned home mighty pleased with themselves and pleased with the good fortune that had blessed them with a future boy. Being devotees of Shiva they had decided to select a name that would reflect the potencies of Shiva.
When the delivery actually did happen, it turned out to everybody’s surprise that the child was in fact a baby girl. The parents were shocked beyond their wildest expectations. How had the doctor been misled? On a careful scrutiny of the images they did realize that the fetus had fooled all of them by a clever use of a finger. Astounded by the remarkable awareness even when in the womb, they had no doubt that it was one of the potencies of Shiva that in fact had manifested as the baby girl. And the proud parents named the baby after the crucial feature of the baby’s body that had protected the child and evidently with the grace of Shiva. Hence the girl came to be given the name Ungleesh (Ungli – finger) – a seemingly masculine name for the charade she had played in great awareness despite being just a fetus in a womb.
