Beauty in a Miracle

I often ask my father how I look when I try a new dress on. And he always replies with what I find rather unusual, ‘You look very pretty. But for me, that 5 pound baby covered in blood will always be the most beautiful.’

This often puzzled me. It was a tad heavy for a fourteen-year-old to understand. As I grew older, I asked my dad what this meant, when he finally told me when I was in my twenties…

“It was raining heavily that night. Your mother, then in her ninth month of pregnancy, was having several contractions and was in severe pain. The hospital was nearby, but going there would’ve taken too long, so we tried to call the doctor to our home.

A doctor and two nurses had arrived after an hour-long drive, for what would’ve taken merely 15 minutes otherwise. The rain didn’t stop and neither did your mom’s wailing.

I held your mom in my arms and lay her on the bed. She was at her heaviest best, but I didn’t feel a thing when I lifted her. All I wanted was for you two to be safe. Your mother leaked unfamiliar moans out of her pores in pain. I held her hand but I still felt as helpless as ever.

“The baby’s crowning. I can see the head.” One of the doctors said after making your mother push several times. I held your mother and wiped the sweat on her forehead every few seconds. She was being brave, and despite the pain, she tried to push you out with all her might.

After that eventful hour, the doctor held you in her arm and your mother fell into an unconscious state. There, in the doctor’s hands, was this little thing with blood all over its body and scratches of hair on its head. I asked the doctor if it was a girl or a boy and with a gloomy expression on her face, she said, “she isn’t breathing.”

My face fell. I went numb. It was like my world had come crashing down on me.

“Please do something, doctor.” I yelled in exasperation. At that moment the only thing I could be relieved about was your mother not being conscious.

The doctor kept you on the study table and rubbed your back and feet. Everyone in the room felt helpless, and watching the colour of your little body change, a tear rolled down my eye.

An hour passed by, the doctor now told the nurse to bring in a vessel full of hot water to dip a towel to rub on your chest. As time went by, she felt more and more restless.

Your mother was conscious now. And after telling her what happened she began to wail incessantly.

The doctor wrapped you in a blanket and took you to another room. Three hours had passed. And the nurse put her hand on my shoulder and said, ‘please pray for a miracle to happen’.

The doctor kept you on a higher platform, and rubbed your chest continuously. We had almost given up hope.

In a desperate attempt the doctor dipped her rubber-glove covered hands in the warm water to clean it. While rubbing your chest with one hand, she pinched your tiny nose and after a brief look at the sky in what was the briefest prayer ever, she brought her mouth close to yours and breathed into it. She kept doing that for a few minutes, until a miracle happened. All of a sudden you gave a meek cough, and a viscous liquid came gushing out of your mouth.

That sight I can never forget- your mother’s smile amid her tears and the sound of you crying from the other room.

The doctor brought you in, smiling, and gave you to your mother saying, “I’ll let you hold her before the nurse cleans her up.”

I had never seen that expression on your mother’s face before that day, it was full of joy, relief and tiredness. She gave you to me after she cajoled you and you stopped crying.

I had held you for the first time that moment. I could never be more thankful to God for giving me what was in my arms. You were still covered in a slimy liquid, your eyes still closed and you were wrapped in a towel. I rocked you gently a few times and I saw calmness on your face. It was that instant that I realised that, to me that was the most beautiful sight ever. The life that ran through your veins, that calm expression on your face, that beautiful little nose and mouth through which I could feel a mild breath pass through; it was all so beautiful.

For me beauty was in the life that I could feel in you, one which had given me more joy than I could ever imagine; beauty was in the eyes of your mother which cried and smiled at the same time; beauty was in the miracle that I had just witnessed. And in my eyes you will always be the most beautiful when I held you in my arms and felt you breath.

From that day on, I found beauty in every smile, every laugh, and every movement of yours. Because you were my miracle baby and whenever I saw you I knew what real beauty meant to me.

 What my father often told me was crystal clear to me now. I felt a little happy tear roll down my eye. My perception of ‘real beauty’ changed after my father narrated this story of the beauty in a miracle.

Wordless Wednesday…

So now they make it legal? 😛 😀

It’s high time you give us (Humanities’ students) due respect

Today, my cousin brought back some horrible old memories. No she wasn’t in it, it was about me, when I was in school. I was talking to her, my cousin in class eleven, on the phone, when she told me that she took science as her subject in school because there was ‘nothing’ she could do with Humanities. Moreover, people would think she was dumb!

This she blatantly said to someone who was a passionate humanities’ student in school, and now, in college as well-Me.

It’s a trivial thought, I know. But the ‘class-divide’ has been there since time immemorial. Things haven’t changed much, since i left school too.

But let me tell you there is NOTHING wrong in studying humanities. It’s a great stream and I have enjoyed myself studying it. It is much more ‘intellectually-stimulating’ and increases rationalising skills much more than any other stream. It also makes you more aware and gives you a broader outlook and perspective on things.

So if you want to advise your kids/siblings/cousins against it, think again.

And now I’ll leave you with something I had written when I was in the eleventh. This too, was out of frustration, due to all the flack I got for doing what I like best.

If you are one of those who holds the popular outlook that humanities students are sure-shot goners, read this. Hopefully this will change your outlook a little.

Humanities’ Students: We dare to be different

All my life I have been condemned to being a social reject and a useless retard merely for the fact that I loved my social science subjects! Well ok, so I am mathematically challenged! big deal! But there’s so much more that I can do which theverbally challenged mathematical geniuses cannot.

All that apart, I was driven by my love for everything that had the word ‘social’ in it, and yes, I did the unthinkable. Iactually opted for humanities in the eleventh. On my first day of class eleventh, I was ecstatic, knowing that I would no longer have to be a slave to books which could have been put to better use as gym weights and that my creative streak didn’t have to suffer an unnatural death. But there was much more to this..

Talk about happiness being short-lived, and there you have it. Little did I know that the murderer of my ecstasy was waiting for me in my own living room… my colony aunty-ji!

Has someone ever told you how some of the wild animals are the most formidable creatures on earth? Well you can give that ‘someone’ a reality check and introduce them to this particular species which will put the most ferocious man-eaters to shame! Yes, I’m talking about, none other than… the colony aunty-ji!

So… when I reached home I was greeted by this formidable creature… and before I knew it, it was too late to escape. And it all started… “my son got a 98% in 12^th and got into IIT. He left ‘2’ marks that’s why uske number kam aaye!” And there it was coming, the next question… I would have given her all my property and would have gone off to live a life of an ascetic if she wouldn’t have asked this next!… “Toh beta, what subject have you taken PCM, PCB, PCMB, PCMC, PCME or just commerce????”

Oh gosh!.. Where were the dinosaurs when you needed them the most? And then came my reply… I felt as though I was a fugitive being questioned for what crime I had done! “well… aunty… actually… I took humanities!” and bingo! The expression on her face said… ‘oh! My God, she’s a serial killer!!

After an agonizing 30 seconds of silence (which seemed more like 30 hours), she spoke, “kyun beta, what will you do with humanities?… how will you make your career? What will you do after 12^th? Aap ke liye toh saare darwaze bandh ho gaye (all your doors have been closed)!!”

I didn’t know what to say to that. Rather I was reluctant to argue for the fact that she would first bring me down to her level and then beat me with her ‘experience’!!

But I would like to put across the message, once and for all, to all the aunty-jis on this side of the Suez Canal… that ‘humanities students aren’t lesser beings!’ And that there is a life beyond being a ‘sciencee’!! And let me tell you… you need a large amount of those grey cells to score in humanities. Well, simply put, it’s easy to gobble up some formulas and vomit them out on paper replacing some of those unearthly symbols with numbers. But it takes a good amount of grey matter to analyze what the Harrapans were trying to convey by composing pictorial manuscripts. Basically, the difference between a sciencee and humanities’ student encountering unearthly symbols would be that a sciencee would mug it up and, like a machine, reproduce it on paper. But a humanities’ student would analyze what they mean and why were they made in the first place. And you obviously need a greater amount of verbal and analytical skills to be able to think that way. And I guess that was the main reason why we humanities’ students were termed ‘weird’… because we dare to be different… we don’t have set boundaries and we have the freedom to think beyond the formulas and the physics’ text book (which would be a weightlifter’s treat).

So all you aspiring humanities’ students out there go ahead and dare to dream. As a wise man once said, “No dream is small if you believe in it and give your best to make it come true.”

Old, Most Definitely Gold

Tom and Jerry, As we liked it

When it comes to media, our generation has the sweetest memories of growing up watching kids’ shows which actually made sense. In terms of media content for kids, there have been so many attempts made to improve the things kids’ watch, which sadly has just defeated the whole purpose. It’s most relevant when it comes to cartoons. The content generated today is breeding a whole new genre of mindless and senseless.

If the dear Mr. Fred Quimby were to see any of the new ‘developments’ done to his pet project ‘Tom and Jerry’, he would be rolling in his grave. The whole beauty of the plot where this cat and mouse fight endlessly and don’t share a single word with each other but still share a special implicit bond, was brutally murdered by the new-age version of the show which has adapted an all new level of violence (almost at nuclear in cartoon terms), as opposed to the cute, tolerable violence it had earlier.

Ben10- strictly for boys!

It’s not only the shows which have changed; channels on the whole have changed by manifold, and in the bargain have disintegrated to no end. Take the language for instance. Not a single script-writer in the 90’s would even dare to as much as pick up his pen to include something like ‘ullu ka pattha’ in any dialogue. This language transition happened when the channels tried to broaden their horizons by including regional languages and in turn, destroyed the language of poor little kids. There is a clear difference between the language of someone who grew up in the 90s and one who grew up today. What is the difference you may ask? Simply put, it is a million times better than the latter.

Shows back then catered to audiences of almost all ages. But I can’t ever imagine myself, even if I were as much of a six-year-old of today, enjoying something like a ‘Shin-Chan’ or a ‘Ninja-Hattori’. Today’s kids’ shows are a breed of far more juvenile and plot-less than it’s much more meaningful, older counterparts. Cartoons of those times had a point. They had a story and a latent message. And they even were funny (I’m not talking about the daft slapstick humour, it was genuine innocent humour).

Disney Princess- Strictly for the girls

Apart from that, cartoons today are breeding in little children an innate dormant sexism. Sometimes when I go to meet my little cousins, the boys and the girls take turns to watch television, as only the boys would watch ‘Ben 10’ and the girls would only watch ‘Barbie Princess’. We never really had that in our time, I loved watching ‘Swatcats’ with my cousin brothers and even they enjoyed ‘Little Lulu’ with me when we sat together and spent some good times together. The same goes for classics like Scooby Doo, Flintstones, and all those wonderful shows which did not propagate the Mars v/s Venus clash at an infantile level.

I get shudders down my spine to think about what these kids would grow up to be growing up amid the perplexity of the entertainment media of their time. In foresight, if this trend doesn’t change, a very typical adult male in the days to come would be a sexist soul who has cuss-words suffixed (or even prefixed) to every possible sentence (most of those sentences hurled upon his wife/girlfriend) and he would probably, at the slightest spark possible, throw about things (including furniture and electronics) in a fit of rage. Yes, we are indeed heading towards it.