Being born is a tedious task not just for the parents
but for the child as well but hardly people realize that. I mean, how much are
we appreciated for staying inside and being formed and doing all sorts of gymnastics
as the doctors show in their picture for each trimester? Not much, right?
When my sister Nisha was due, she just asked for a few extra
days, not much, just for a few more days. What did those doctors do? They inducted
mom into labor and forced her out. She came out with three rounds of cord
around the neck. Next time, better not to force anyone for anything. What if
God wanted her to be born on the 15th? We’d be having the same
birthday. Now it is 3 days apart.
Swimming in the amniotic fluid is another world. I don't remember much about that part of my life. But I know that I was born on time or
the time was on time for me. It was a day on October, 14th, I think, my mother
asked my father, “What do you want to call the baby?” Without a second thought,
he replied, “Nithya”. They did not even consider the possibility of having a boy.
Nithya, Nisha’s sister, Nithya. Rhyming enough, right?
My parents reached the hospital at the right time for
my birth. Unlike my sister, I arrived on time just to be kept in a warmer. Every
child comes with a bundle of challenges. The time of truth came when the doctor
asked mom a cliche question, “Is this your first baby?” “No”, mummy replied. As a nurse mom was sure what that question meant. In layman’s terms, it means even if this
one dies, you have another. Mom later told me that her heart sank at the thought of what they would have gone through when she used the same question when others babies’ life
was at stake.
My father, on the other hand, was regretting and confusing his sin of thinking to abort me at least for a little while. As prayers went up to somehow get me back, I came back to life to meet other earthlings. They needed me, what to say more than that?
In my later days, while facing challenges, like most of us, I too asked the Almighty, “Why didn't You call me back while I was in my mom’s womb.” He replied, "for two reasons. One, I want to crown you with gifts when you reach the Home Eternal. And the second is, without you on earth, it’d be porridge without salt for Me".
Sometimes, life is not what we want but what God wants. And
I learned that it'd be better to yield to the hands of the Potter than fight.
The nurse came and asked my father to get me something
to drink. The reader must understand that my excellent birth process which stayed for 3 hectic days took place in Kottayam
in 1984 October, a time and place when we hardly had many baby
drinks. Unfortunately, I came a year earlier to Dr. Emmett Brown's invention of the time machine, even though the birth process of it might have happened in the mind of its crew while I was crying for food. As an
earthling confined to the time-space parameters, my father managed to get a bottle
of a health drink from a relative. And I had my first drink, Complan,
the complete food. True story, not because they made me the brand ambassador of
Complan.
