The Rite of Baby Shower

Om Hindu Mondir. Torpignattara. Rome, 6 April 2022

Recently I was lucky enough to attend a Hindu ritual totally new for me, called Shaadh bhakhan in Bangla and dedicated to pregnant women. I was told that it's not easy to see as it's usually celebrated at home with family and closest friends. This time the married couple decided to celebrate it at the temple.

Shaadh can be translated as “wish/desire” and has the same ritual meaning as the “baby shower” found in different cultures and parts of the world, which celebrates the new baby born or the birth of a child who will come shortly, usually during the seventh month of pregnancy: the “shower” is nothing more than the number of gifts with which the future mother is “swamped” by the participants in the party.

Usually the “baby shower” is reserved only for the first child and is a ritual exclusively for women, even if it has changed over time.

There are traces of it even since the ancient Egyptians and Greeks, even if at that time the ritual took place after birth and involved the separation of the mother from the child for a specific period as if to “purify from the birth”, and then a period of ten days before the new mother could return to the society. My mother told me that this also happened in Sardinia at the time of her grandparents, and it is still relevant in Iran.

The modern baby shower in America began in the late 1940s and 1950s when post-war women experienced the demographic explosion thanks to better economic living conditions and the baby shower became a way to help the mother with material goods, as was the trousseau for women who were getting married.

It's amazing how every country and culture celebrates it in its own way.

But let's stay in the area of the Indian sub-continent.

In India, since the Vedic age, a pregnancy ritual called seemantha was performed, which was held in the 6th or 8th month. The future mother was showered with dried fruit, sweets and other propitiatory gifts for the good growth of the child. It was accompanied by music to please the baby's hearing from inside the uterus.

Then the ritual took on different names depending on the region in which it is practiced: godh bharai (filled lap) in northern India, Seemandham among the Malayals or Valaikappu among the Tamils and Shrimant among the Gujaratis. In coastal Karnataka, especially in Tulunadu (Tulu-speaking region), the ceremony is also known as “baayake” ('ಬಾಯಕೆ'). Baayake in Tulu means desire: as pregnant women crave fruit and edible food during the period of pregnancy this ceremony was born in ancient times to satisfy the future mother's desire for food.

As you can see, each region performs the ritual in a different way even if the goal remains the same, that is to flatter the aspiring mother with her favorite dishes, blessed and covered with gifts from her friends and relatives: it is a way to make the woman feel special, having reached the end of the journey that will soon make her a mother.

In West Bengal, the festival is called “sadh” (সাধ) or “sadhbhokkhon” (সাধভক্ষণ) in the seventh month of pregnancy. After this, the woman resides in her father's house instead of her husband's until her birth.

 

Chinmoy and Puja

I attended the Sadhbhokkhon Puja, of the wife of my friend Chinmoy Ghosh, in her first pregnancy.

The ceremony was officiated by the brahmin in the Om Hindu Mondir in Torpignattara.

Before the brahmin blessed her husband and his gold ring, a gift from her parents for this ceremony.

Then he blessed the couple with prayers while the husband pressed the gold ring, which is the highest value metal, to the Puja belly.

After the shared part, Chinmoy gave way to Puja and to women for the heart of the ritual: Puja had to drink milk with a banana in a bowl because in Hinduism milk is a symbol of purification, for herself and for the child inside her. Then the women – seven, because they must always be odd in number – gathered around the future mother and first gave her some whole fruit that she put into a fabric and gave them back, which after passing the bundle one to one they gave it back to Puja who held it close. The meaning of this act lies in the fruit that is given whole, uncut, to symbolize the child who will be born healthy, without any physical impairment.

Finally, the women offered her the plate with the food to eat, always in contact with each other, and sat down with Puja to eat all together.

A few days later I was invited for the same type of baby shower celebration at the couple's house, but this time as a simple private party, more secular, as a pure moment of joy among the closest friends.

 

What struck me about this ritual is its change in meaning over time. We are talking about hundreds of years ago when the mortality of pregnant women was much higher, the future mother was granted every wish, precisely because her parents feared that she would not survive the birth. Nowadays this risk no longer exists and Shaadh is a moment of joy that every pregnant woman eagerly awaits.

There remains that ancient link, in my mind, between life and death that fascinates me, even if by now it has lost – fortunately – that meaning.

Torpignattara. Rome, April 8, 2022

I will continue to tell you about these rituals and the life of migrants, with their baggage of ancient traditions transplanted into the streets of Rome.

Italian version