Among the 37 babies born today at New Delhi’s Safdarjung Hospital was a girl who weighed less than a kg. On her first day, she fought for life for a few hours—but failed. She died of the infections she got from her mother, Aarti Bisht, who suffered 50 per cent burns in the Sarojini Nagar blast. Before she drifted back to sedated sleep this afternoon, the mother had asked once, ‘‘How’s my baby?’’ Nobody wants to tell her. Aarti, a Netaji Nagar resident, had gone along with her two sisters and mother to the market. All of them are now in the hospital. The baby, born in the eighth month of pregnancy, had a hole in the heart but the infection proved fatal. The doctors decided to go for a Ceasarian section after Aarti went into labour on Friday night. ‘‘Doctors said last night that they could save only one of them,’’ said Bharti, Aarti’s elder sister. ‘‘For almost a week now, she hasn’t slept. Today, she has gone off to sleep after delivering the baby. She was so excited about the baby. If she gets to know about it, she will also die,’’ said husband Surender Singh Bisht as he wept. When the couple decided to have a baby two years after their marriage, they flipped through several books for names. ‘‘Last night too, she told me that she would like me to name the child,’’ said Mukesh, her brother-in-law. This evening, when Aarti was being wheeled back to the burns ward again, she told Mukesh: ‘‘Bhaiya naam kya rakhna hai bachi ka?” RELATAD STORY
