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After delivering my daughter in 2003, I endured and survived a hemorrhage, the leading childbirth-related complication that takes the lives of thousands of other mothers all over the world.

There has been a terrible hemorrhage of educated women to the West where they can flourish. I understand, but it is terrible. We must stay home.

Maternal health remains a staggering challenge, particularly in the developing world. Globally, a woman dies from complications in childbirth every minute.

There was a woman in Tunisia called Madame Pinot. She was a midwife and had helped in the birth of my siblings and me. I assisted her. I helped women give birth to a lot of babies when I was very young.

For that story, I took as my subject a young woman whom I got to know over the course of a couple of visits. I never saw her having any health problems - but I knew she wanted to be married.

I am aware of the sufferings of women in India, which is also the suffering of women in many, many countries on our planet. My heart is filled with empathy and love for them.

Childbirth changed my perception of my wife. She was now the bloodied special forces soldier who had fought and risked everything for our family.

Often, women who lose babies are blamed for the loss of those children and are ostracised.

My birth was managed so rottenly that my mother had eventually to have a hysterectomy, after which she was ill off & on till she dies for obscure reasons when I was just 7.