Jan 30, 20228 min read

Mimi

Yesterday afternoon I had some spare time to sit down and be with myself so I decided to celebrate the occasion by laying on the couch, covering my body with a warm, fuzzy cover and watch a good movie.

As I scrolled through the different options on Netflix one title caught my attention: Mimi.

The movie was the story of a young, beautiful and talented Indian girl, called Mimi, who aspired to become a Bollywood star. She was an actress and a dancer and she was ready to do anything possible to make her dream become true.

Her only problem? Money.

One day, after one of her dancing shows, she was approached by a humble taxi driver who explained to her that a wealthy American couple was interested in hiring her as the surrogate mother for their future child. Her first reaction was anger and disbelief at such a cheeky proposal, but when the man added that the process didn’t involve any physical contact and that the couple was willing to pay about $25,000 dollars cash for it, she felt that maybe this was the opportunity that she was waiting for to finally move to Mumbai and start her career.

So she meets with the future parents, signs the surrogate mother agreement and goes to the clinic to start the IVF treatment. As soon as she finds out that she is pregnant she moves in with one of her best friends to hide the pregnancy from her family.

Everything seems to proceed well until, few weeks before the delivery date, the gynecologist breaks the news to the parents that their child was diagnosed with a mental disability.

The biological mom immediately enters into a state of panic and runs out of the doctor’s office. She refuses to talk about the situation and asks her husband to run away back to America, saying that a mental disability is too much for her to handle and that she planned to have the healthiest and most perfect of babies, not one with a mental disability.

The driver witnesses the conversation between the biological parents and begs them to rethink their choice and take responsibility for the promise they made, however he is not able to change their mind.

The couple asks the driver to communicate the news to Mimi and have her abort the child. Once back at their hotel, they prepare their bags and return to where they came from.

As soon as Mimi finds out about the situation she runs to the hotel to find the couple but with no success. They had already taken off and she realizes she is left with the choice of aborting the child or taking responsibility for him.

In spite of the overwhelming sense of anger and desperation she decides to protect the life growing in her womb and keep the child. Together with her friend and the driver she returns to her parents house and pretends to be married to the driver, who she introduces as the father of her child. After the initial shock and disappointment the family finally decides to support her, so she ends up moving back with her parents.

Once the baby is born she finds out that he is perfectly healthy and that the test was what is called "a false positive". As she observes this new tiny little baby touch her hand and cuddle in her arms she starts feeling less angry about the deception and the betrayal and rather grateful for this wonderful and unexpected gift.

Time passes by and the baby, called Raj, becomes the reason of happiness for every member of the family. Mimi gives up her dream to become a Bollywood actress but she eventually goes back to dancing and making shows, often carrying her little boy along with her on the stage.

By the times Raj turns four he is a happy, naughty boy just like all his friends.

Everything seems to be perfect until one day Mimi and Raj come back home to find that Raj's biological parents had come back to claim their child back.

They had watched one video gone viral showing Mimi dancing with a white boy and they immediately knew it had to be their son.

The biological mom apologizes for running away and tells Mimi that she needs the boy to go back with them in USA. She tells her that Raj is their last hope to finally be happy and that, unlike herself, Mimi could have more babies in the future.

The arrival of the couple reawakens in Mimi all the anger that she had suppressed years before so she asks them to leave the house and refuses to agree to their absurd request. The couple then argues that Raj is not her child but theirs and that they will hire a lawyer to get the situation legally sorted out.

Mimi's family is immediately thrown in a vortex of anguish and despair. They decide to consult a lawyer but they quickly find out that based on the surrogacy contract they signed years before, Mimi had very little chances of winning the battle and that bringing the case to court would have caused a huge amount of stress to Raj who would have been forced to be present in court for all hearings.

Mimi is torn apart. She doesn't want to lose her son but she also loves him enough to not want to put him through the torturous proceedings of a legal case so she decides to surrender to the request of the couple. The family tries to object but her heart is set. She runs away and cries her eyes out.

At this point, back to me, I threw my cozy cover away and stood up. I started yelling at the biological parents for having the nerve to come back to India and call the child their own! How dare them!

Then, furious and upset about the sad final I fast forwarded the movie to the end and switched off the TV. "What a shitty movie!" I said. (I didn't really believe that but I was pissed).

I was an emotional mess and I felt a bunch of emotions overlapping with each other.

I was furious most of all, but when I stopped and checked in with myself I realized the rage was mostly driven by fear. Fear of someone taking away from me someone I love. Fear of being unable to protect them. Fear of being vulnerable and powerless. Fear of the pain the child would have to endure and of the pain I would have to deal with as a consequence of that.

While watching the last few scenes before fast forwarding to the end I had a bunch of thoughts popping into my head, one of which was very, very dark.

“I would have them killed”.

That thought was immediately followed by another thought, then another.

“No…I would never do that.”

“Then what?”

And a huge feeling of despair pervaded me and forced me to stop the movie. I started to intellectualize my feelings and try to calm myself down by reminding myself that this was just a work of fiction.

As I realized what I was doing I decided to soften into my feelings and stop using my mind.

Y'all! I cried like I haven’t cried for ages. A heavy, unstoppable, inconsolable cry. And as I cried and cried I couldn't stop thinking how messed up this world is..and how unjust!!!

Powerful, selfish, unloving people always get what they want while powerless, humble, loving people always have to endure the abuse. I thought that if I were in that situation I would have probably asked God for help but then I also thought “What for?”.

God’s justice is inexorable and unavoidable but, alas, also so slow! The couple would have got away with reclaiming the child and nobody would have been able to do anything about it until, maybe, decades later.

How unfair. How unjust.

I wondered why did they have to portray such a sad story but then I realized that I hadn’t technically watched it until the end. In my efforts to avoid my fears and my pain I had fast forwarded to the end and assumed by the few pieces of scenes running by that Raj would eventually go with the biological parents.

Then a voice whispered “Finish it. Watch it.” (My spirit guide, I'm sure)

And I thought, oh well….I might as well. I had cried my eyes out already, lashed out at the shitty final, I might as well watch the last few bits and see what else it brings up for me.

That’s when it all changed.

When Mimi and her family meet the biological parents to hand over Raj to them these lasts thank her for everything that she has done for Raj and then surprisingly ask her to keep the baby.

The mom explains that few days before the meeting they happened to drive by an orphanage and they saw a crying little girl hanging on the fence of the building. Their eyes met and she felt the girl's call for help so she felt impelled to stop and meet the girl, who they eventually decided to adopt.

She then adds that after seeing Raj with Mimi she realized that being a parent is not about sharing genes or looks but about sharing love. Mimi had built an unbreakable bond of love with Raj and it would have been selfish and hurtful to take him away from her, for SHE WAS his real mom.

The biological mom was now determined to follow Mimi's example and become a loving mom to the girl that she had just adopted.

My jaw dropped and I was reminded of a few vital lessons:

1) Fear and love can never coexist. The biological mom was afraid of dealing with a mental illness when she ran away. Fear drove her action. Then she came back and she wanted her baby back at all costs because she felt that he was her last chance to become a mother and be happy. Again, fears drove her actions and clogged her thinking to the point of not realizing the damage she was going to create in the baby. On the other side, when Mimi realized she had been cheated and she was going to be left alone with the baby she didn't let her fears guide her actions. She chose to love and it paid off.

2) Lack of humility creates only damage to ourselves and others. Experiencing our fears and our grief rather than trying to control them helps us get rid of them and see things with clarity. So for example in my case I wouldn’t have yelled at the lady on tv if I had been immediately humble to my emotions.

3) The movie showed me how little faith I have in God’s Love and Omnipotence and how addicted I still am to self-reliance. This unexpected plot twist was a powerful reminder that nothing is impossible for God. If we act in harmony with Love there is nothing, NOTHING, we need to fear. We only need Faith in God's Goodness and Trust in the fact that “His ways are not our ways”.

God has the power to change our hearts and teach us everything that we need to know about love, if we only allow Him to do so.

What a journey this movie was. In the past few days I had been praying God to show me what are my blocks to receiving His love and WOW was this a clear answer to my prayers.

God never fails to answer when we ask with sincerity and desire. The questions is, would you dare ask AND would you be ready to receive the answer?