The Inheritance after a Loss

The curious case of the grandparents who want a surrogate child from a semen sample of their dead son

The home of KP Ravikumar and his wife Karthyayani is a small hut made of bamboo and coconut leaves, in Mambra village of Kerala’s Ernakulam district. In the verandah sits a harmonium that’s never touched. Inside the hut, on a wall hangs a violin that’s never played. These belong to their only son Ratheesh, an aspiring musician who passed away in January 2011.

Ratheesh died of testicular cancer. But he left more than memories and musical instruments behind. He also left a sample of his semen, taken while he was under treatment and preserved under medical supervision. Recently, a court approved a request by his parents for his semen of a Kochi hospital, ordering that it be released within three months.

Since that court ruling, life has turned upside down for Ravikumar and Karthyayani. This is because news got out that they planned to use their son’s semen to get a surrogate child. What was a purely personal decision to hold on to and nurture a live memory of their son, has turned into a media maelstrom in Kerala. For a week, TV cameras lay siege to their hut, capturing every emotion recordable, from agony and uncertainty to hope and excitement, even as newspapers gave their story frontpage coverage. Almost everyone was sympathetic to their plight, but it has not brought them any relief. They still don’t know if they can have the baby.

The case, to put it mildly, is unusual. Ravikumar is 59 years old. He retired as a labourer at an automobile garage. Karthyayani is 58 years old. She works as a sweeper at a nearby government hospital in Angamaly. At first, after their son’s death, they simply wanted to adopt a child, but found that under the prevalent adoption rules, parents whose combined age is more than 90 cannot do so. “We came to know that we are not eligible,” says Karthyayani, “We were past the age bar.” That was when surrogacy struck them as an option.

The lives of Ravikumar and Karthyayani had always revolved around their son. Though they were poor, Ratheesh, a music lover, had managed to do a BA in Music from University of Sanskrit in Kalady. He had a passion for cinema and was fascinated by soundtracks. So the parents took an education loan and sent him to Chennai for a course in sound engineering. Ratheesh was finally on his way to making a career of his calling. “After a performance in Chennai,” recalls the mother, “he even got the blessings of [the veteran Carnatic vocalist] Dakshinamoorthy sir.”

They saw Ratheesh first fall ill in early 2010, after he had finished his course and returned home. He had fever and was laid low by fatigue, but a few days of medical treatment revived his health. Though he had job offers from Chennai, he said he wanted to spend some time with his parents in Kerala. Within a few months—by the end of 2010—their son collapsed again and was admitted to Little Flower Hospital in Angamaly with high fever. The doctors there initially diagnosed an infection, but further tests pointed to a testicular tumour. He was referred to the oncology department of Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences in Kochi. It was here, on the advice of doctors, that a semen sample was taken and preserved in the Centre for Infertility Management, a hospital in Kochi that specialises in infertility treatment. “The semen was needed for diagnosis,” says Karthyayani, “The doctors also told us that infertility cannot be ruled out after the treatment. Hence, the advice.” In accordance with the hospital’s procedures, their son signed an agreement that stipulated a period of one year for the sample’s preservation, after which it would be destroyed.

It took Ratheesh’s parents more than six months just coming to terms with his death; their lives, they felt, had suddenly become meaningless. It was Karthyayani who first thought of raising another child. Adoption turned out to be a non-option, but, as a hospital worker, she was aware of surrogacy. “Both of us mulled the idea for a long time. We were well aware of the stigma of hiring a woman to have a baby. We knew people might criticise the move, but decided to go ahead,” says Ravikumar, whose brother was very supportive when he heard the idea and encouraged them to get the semen sample from the hospital.

Still, the couple had no idea how to proceed. So they asked around, and a relative of Ravikumar, a married mother of two, volunteered to be the surrogate mother. Ravikumar does not disclose anything about any money they were going to pay her, but says they planned to sell their land—about a tenth of an acre—to raise funds. “We thought we would request her to stay with us during her pregnancy so that we could assure her our utmost care,” he says. The only thing left was to collect the semen from the hospital.

The hospital authorities had no objection, but wanted a court ruling to ensure their legal safety. So the parents approached a lawyer and filed a petition in the local Lok Adalat. However, the director of the hospital—the ‘respondent’ in the case—filed a counter-affidavit saying that the sole owner of the ‘property’ was no longer alive and had given his written consent to destroy it by the end of the stipulated period of one year. The court overruled this objection and issued an order in favour of Karthyayani and Ravikumar. That it would invite such media attention didn’t occur to them.

By the very next day, local journalists who track Lok Adalat proceedings had caught hold of a case they knew would create a stir. “A few reporters contacted me and I gave them information on the case,” says advocate Aniyan P Vakkom, the lawyer who represented them in court, “I requested them not to reveal the identities of the couple and to wait for the order to be passed. Many of them agreed, but some English newspapers carried the story. A TV channel managed to get a copy of the representation, found their address, and did a story. They did not even bother to seek their permission.” It had unforeseen consequences. Scared by all the publicity, the surrogate-mother volunteer backed out.

The media, according to Arathi PM, a PhD scholar at the Centre for Community Health and Social Medicine in Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University, “has to learn some lessons in privacy”. She adds, however, that such a reproductive phenomenon does deserve public scrutiny: “The practice of surrogacy remains extremely clandestine in India. In-vitro fertilisation technology is dominated by the private sector. It is a booming business in India and has led to reproductive tourism. It is important to bring in as much transparency as possible and safeguard the rights of both parents and surrogate mothers.”

India has no law on surrogate deliveries, since the Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) Regulation Bill of 2010 has not yet been approved by Indian Parliament. Until then, ART clinics are expected to follow guidelines framed by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR).

Most of the noise around the case has to do with the fact that Ravikumar and Karthyayani are an elderly couple. They should not try raising a child, some argue, given their age. “It should be a matter of concern,” says Dr Nirmala Vasudevan, an infertility specialist, “The old couple may eventually become ill or even die before the child turns ten or 15 years old.”

Their lawyer has a ready response to that objection. “There is no age bar under the ICMR guidelines on surrogacy,” says Vakkom, “Hence their age does not matter.” Moreover, Karthyayani’s nephew has assured the couple that he would raise the child after their death. That’s why they have not given up the dream of having their progeny back in their midst. The trouble is, the surrogate volunteer who backed out refuses to change her mind. They now have to find somebody else.

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