To my daughter- with love

Dearest child,

It has been quite a journey, the mother of all roller coaster rides these past three and a half years................. but the pleasure, the thrill has been unmatched despite the close calls that happened to my poor heart.

At 1.20 am on 7th October, 2004, you decided that enough was enough, the waiting-for-the-right-time-to-see-the-world game had become quite tiresome, and it was time to take matters in your hand. Had you paused just a moment to consult your poor mother, I would have tried to put some good sense in your stubborn head, but now since I know patience is not one of your virtues, I realise that perhaps it would have been in vain. Your timing was bad, child, the sky looked pensive and heavy with a thousand dark intentions. I hated to go down and disturb the sleep of two of the kindest people who walk this beautiful earth( your dear dear grandparents).... but since you showed no intention of listening to me, I had no option but to wake them up and then call up the hospital.

Your "dada" said he will drive me to the hospital and "aeba"would need to come along as well. It was around 3.50 am when we started, the drizzle was steadily increasing to bigger and rounder drops and within minutes the roads resembled slithering, glossy, hissing serpents....... The famous potholes on our Kolkata roads now assumed the look of craters, rapidly filling up with the liquid ire of the Rain God. Well, you sure handed over a great responsibility to your "dada", handling his precious cargo and reaching safely the destination, in that mad, mad night. So at roughly around 20 minutes past 5 or maybe a little later we rolled in through the hospital gates. I was wheeled in with royal treatment and assigned a room with a 72 year old who had (I dont know how!!) broken one of her hip joints and now had a steel ball in her hip socket as replacement .wow imagine!

Well as a matter of fact, you had been in your new home only for 36 weeks, it would have been so much the better for all of us, if you would have stayed back for just another 1 or 2 weeks more.

...... Well, come to think of it, it wasn't that bad actually, because Ma Durga was sheduled to visit her earthly abode around the 19th of October, and Pujas being what it is for Kolkata, doctors might have gone for extended leaves, and what could have been worse, than spending the "DURGA PUJAS" in a hospital bed, when the whole city would be lost in joy and merriment.

There I go again rushing ahead in my tale, sorry sweetheart, lets go back to Room No. 203 A of Aurobindo Seva Kendra at Jodhpur Park....

By 7.30 the entire city was waterlogged, lifts stopped working, doctors couldnt keep deadlines since their vehicles, midway, swallowed water, hiccupped and stalled, the morning shift staff couldn't reach as trains were halted at god forsaken stations and the nurses, attendants and doctors were forced to work overtime.

The same fate was meted to our Omni and your dada and aeba had to dump it at the petrol pump (thank god, the car had the good sense to go kaput there!) and wade through knee deep and then thigh deep waters to come to the hospital at around 10.30 am.

I was getting worried about your safety and kept enquiring for the doctor...... everytime being told not to worry... he was on his way....... finally they couldn't keep it from me anymore, my doc would'nt be able to make it and so his next in charge would take over. I was besides myself with worry. I trusted my doctor with my life and more importantly yours - it was a bond which had gradually developed over a period of 9 long months every moment of which was cherished and loved.....

The lift was not working so 4 (strong) attendants lifted me on a stretcher and carried me up two flights of stairs to the OT. I felt quite funny besides being scared!

7th October, 1.30 p. m. : Suffice it to say, I hate OTs.... they scare me, my nerves desert me and it is living hell........But oh ! I see the familiar face of my angel doctor who smiles behind his mask, I see the smile in his eyes and am reassured.....

7th October, 1.37 pm: my anaesthetist asks me "what do you think.....will it be a boy or a girl......"

7th October, 1.38 pm, Thursday: A sweet feeble cry....... I say 'its a b...a GIRL", the doc smiles and says " yes you are right , a girl it is!"

They bring you near, my heart wells up in my eyes, a pretty child, so frail and delicate ( child, I ate such a lot, what happened ? you let me down you know, 2 kilos and 250 gms, it sure was a bad performance!)

The following 2 days , are a little hazy dear, I was worried for you but not overly..... it was later that I came to know that you sure had battled it out with pipes and tubes and incubators...... but I had always known that you my child are a Fighter with all the letters in capitals and you will make your own destiny.

14th October , Thursday: WE are HOME!!!

Several million milestones later.......

1st February 2007 , 9.15 am : As your dada and I take you to your first date with school "ROCKFORD HOUSE" we are tensed and besides ourselves with worry. The initial moments were easy, you walk in holding my hand, raising shy eyes to the new "aunty" who is smiling at you.... its only when she holds your hand and leads you away that you cry out in protest..............Ah child it wrung my heart to leave you and go to office.

At 10.30 your dada calls me up and tells me that you have been so inconsolable, crying "dada... dada" all the while that they have let you go. Papiya aunty tells your dada that this is the first time she has come across a child who could not be consoled, quietened and diverted by all the means that she had hitherto employed successfully, for all other new entrants to her fold. Well, did'nt we all know how obstinate our little angel could be.......

27 days of pure agony, interspersed with occasional hours of ecstasy followed. You pleaded with us saying " Papiya Aunty baaje (bad), aami ecool (school) jabo na...... dadaaaaaaaaaaa, aami ecool jabo na". Saturdays and Sundays you loved best ....... we agonised over your settling in school, would it ever happen? were they treating you well ? maybe we needed to change schools ???

Aah, finally 28th February 2007 : Before your "dada"'s and my startled eyes you accept Papiya Aunty's hand held out to you, smile shyly, wave to us and go through the school gate WITHOUT A PROTEST. So, our wait is finally over , you have actually started liking school..... looking forward to it in fact.

You sing, you dance, you recite your nursery rhymes in your high pitched sing song voice and each and every word and action of yours we would like to freeze in the frame of time and preserve for ever in the albums of our mind. Oh! how I pray that the cruel hands of time not dim the memory of these moments and our accompanying feelings of pride, joy and weak kneed thankfulness.

I , for one, now fully understand the profoundity of " I love you so much, it hurts". You will too but you have to wait till god lets you become a mother...........................

7th April 2008, Monday: We have lived out a lifetime these past three and a half months, but that is a story for another day, another time.

Today you take your first step towards making your own destiny, preparing yourself for leaving behind footprints on the sands of time.....You did not cry when I handed you over to your class teacher Ananya Banerjee at Delhi Public School. You were brave and I would want you to be so , take every new step with a sparkle in your eyes and spring in your step, however frightened you be in your heart.

You cried when I went to pick to pick you up after school. My heart welled up, I hated your misery as much you hated it...... but dear, as you grow up , life will teach you that man's got to do what man's got to do..... and I was supposed to to be strong and guide you, right?

You blackmailed me into bunking office" Mamma please jeyo na, aamar ssathe thako, aamar khushi hobe". I was too weak hearted a mother to be a disciplinarian and called up to excuse myself.

Aah my child how it wrings my heart when every night while going to bed you ask me in a plaintive voice "Mamma kalke school nei toh..." (mamma, do I need to go to school tomorrow....). And then in the morning again " mamma please dont send me to school...... I dont want to go to BIG school". I go through the entire cycle that I went through when you first started school.

You come back with your tiffin untouched.... throwing us into paroxyms of anxiety...... the entire day you are a happy child but as night comes your question pops up again..... when will you fall in love with your school child ?

7th May 2008, Wednesday : ON the ride to the school I tell you, how your summer hols will commence from 1 day later..... you ask me again and again , Mamma...CHHUTI????, "Yes beta tomar 30 days chutti, tumi khali khelbe, drawing korbe, aamra shopping jabo" , you stare at me your eyes twin twinkling stars.... "mamma satti bolcho toh"(mamma are you telling the truth?)

I promise that its GOd's own Truth.

That day YOU enter school with a SMILE on your Face!!!!!.

So DEAR CHILD we resume anew with renewed hopes our BLESSED journey THROUGH LIFE......

The face of God.....

For the multitude of us God usually signifies some deity or individual specific to our own religion, the respect, fear or love for whom is ingrained in our hearts and minds, perhaps from the very childhood....
As a child, I remember being told by my Maa that God had a book wherein He kept a record of your deeds- good ones with golden stars and bad ones with black stars...... From time to time God went through the records and if the black stars outnumbered the golden ones, then that was when some punishment was meted out and ofcourse a reward if the opposite was true. I had a tough time deciding whether taking pickles from the jar (ofcourse while maa was taking a siesta) to go with a romantic book on a lazy Sunday afternoon amounted to a sin which needed confessing to Maa (and risk a scolding) or was so small an aberration that God would overlook it, in the true spirit of a SPORTING PARENT !
My maa hails from a family of true blue brahmins for whom rituals are almost or perhaps more important than the act of connecting to God( through prayers, mantras or worship...).
During my early childhood, I remember hanging around Maa when she performed Puja, the strange sanskrit mantras uttered from her lips sounded enchanting and I tried hard to commit them to my memory. On days when my school was off I liked to clean up the temple corner ( which Maa had done up in the auspicious North-east corner of the bedroom), decorate the deities with fresh flowers plucked from the garden and sandalwood paste that Maa prepared, and light the incense sticks. The resulting ambience of peace, calm and that special wonderful "holy" smell was something which touched me even at that age.

Now, after two decades and then some more years later, I am hard pressed for time to even spend a couple of minutes with folded hands in front of the innumerable deities that Maa has kept on adding to her worship corner( so much so that Baba has thoughtfully made for her a separate Puja room) ..................... I have to rush to office and reach on time, braving and defeating the morning traffic snarls, ready and feed my three year old before depositing her to her preschool, remember to take the cheque book for the credit card payment lest I be fined an unthinkable amount.....all these rushing in and out of my mind, rendering all my efforts at connecting with God the "old way" , a "mission impossible" kind of feat. I tell myself I will reach out to God later and I also know God will understand.......
....With knowledge that is born of having walked the earth for three decades, I now connect to God in the most simple and unelaborate of ways....... when I sink gratefully into the vacated window seat of the state bus, knowing I will have an hour of unadulterated peace, the morning breeze caressing my face, soulful tunes from FM soothing my morning nerves, my eyes catching the glimpse of the little boy gleefully playing with his sister in front of his unassuming home on the roadside, I thank God from the bottom of my heart, for His boundless mercy in giving me this life and the wonderful feeling of being alive. The small precious moment snatched from the hands of a demanding and unforgiving day comes back to me...... my daughter looking straight into my eyes,with an angelic smile on her face.... the first thing that met my eyes when I opened them in the morning,................ to me that is the face of my God..... for me to love and cherish and worship like never before.........................................

Bound together, for better or for worse....

I am the owner of my Karma
I inherit my karma
I am born of my karma
I am related to my karma
I live supported by my karma
Whatever karma I create,
whether good or evil,
that I shall inherit.............................
No, before you rush headlong into thinking that I am the author of these deep reflections please let me be honest and tell you that these have been spoken by " The Buddha", but the truth of these words was inescapable, even to an ignoramus like me........
Isn't this the only truth that defines life?