Media has ruined my life: Nirmala

CHANDIGARH, July 16: Nrmala, who attracted media attention for proposing to rent her womb to a childless couple, resurfaced after mysteriou...

CHANDIGARH, July 16: Nrmala, who attracted media attention for proposing to rent her womb to a childless couple, resurfaced after mysteriously disappearing from her Chandigarh residence to escape prowling journalists of the national media.

Bitter, broken and ostracised, 35-year-old Nirmala said that the excessive media exposure brought her nothing but shame and humiliation.“I feel so humiliated that I should commit suicide,” she said, adding that many invectives have been heaped on her and that she has been declared an outcast by her close relatives.

Nirmala said even the couple who were going to hire her womb was angry with her.

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“If my paralysed husband dies for want of treatment, I will commit sati on his pyre,” she said.

Blaming the media for compounding her problems, she says she is so upset with journalists that “I will pounce upon them if they came to me again”.When this correspondent met her, she was in tears. She said that an unscrupulous publisher has come out with a booklet with all juicy details and that she was carrying a three-month-old foetus.

“I am not pregnant,” she said.

Threatening to sue the newspapers which published her photographs and sketches for damaging her reputation, she lamented that mediapersons just exploited her to get a frontpager. “The day my photographs appeared in the press, I was identified only to be humiliated and cursed by the relations”.

Her lawyer, Navjit Singh Brar, said he was exploring the possibility of filing a defamation suit against the newspapers for damaging the reputation of his client. “I will request the court to hold in-camera proceedings,” he said.

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Nirmala has rejected the proposal of an NRI who offered her Rs 50,000 if she changed her mind. Another Singapore-based NRI moved by her pathetic condition offered to help her by paying Rs 3000 per month, Brar said, adding that she had turned down all these offers.

“A woman reporter from a local leading newspaper promised me a job if I changed my mind. She neither filed her story nor helped me get a job,” Nirmala said.

“I do not want alms. Don’t pity me. I will change my decision if somebody can get me a job to earn enough to support my crippled husband and a five year old son,” she said.

When PTI broke her story on June 6, she had twin aims: one, to help the childless couple and second, to make money to get her paralysed husband better medical treatment.

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Brar said that Nirmala was a bold woman, and all progressive women should admire her for exercising her freedom to rent a part of her body for a good cause.

“Why are people raising eyebrows” he asked, adding that her proposal was not a new thing. Niyog’ (a consented intercourse to bear a child) was practised in ancient india, he pointed out.

Brar said he would like to pursue the case so that a law could be developed to help childless couples have a biological baby of their own instead of adopting a child.