My Autobiography: Delivery of the XX, I am Born.

4.33PM, 13^TH July 1995: To be born on the 18^TH because of an unanticipated emergency, during the warm and queasy afternoon, in possibly one the best hospitals that could be found in the small town of Etawah, Uttar Pradesh (Of course, the hospital nowhere matched standards of our modern day city hospitals.) I was born, but supposedly dead.

We all know, when babies first set their little bums on hospital beds, all covered in the blood from their mother’s womb, they cry- rather screech! Learned people claim from trustworthy researches that it’s because the amniotic fluid in the lungs is replaced by air, and this makes the baby’s first breath devastatingly painful. And other learned people assume the wailing comes out because the child doesn’t want to set foot on such a dreadful place, so called the Mrutyulok, the place where everything dies. From the warm cradle of the heavenly mother’s uterus where they lay safe and sound, they land into a cold environment, cold because of temperature and because of the brutality of the so-called-cold-yet warm-blooded humans. Whatever be the reason, babies cry when delivered- when their sealed and comfortable packaging abruptly opens up. But, I wasn’t one of those normal kinds. I was a blue baby. I was as good as dead.

We’ve heard of the umbilical cord, haven’t we? The blue-white cord that’s attached to the navel of the new borns? It is used to transfer the deoxygenated blood into the mother’s placenta, and is one of those immensely important structures for providing the heavenly experience of the womb to the fetus. But, in some great ones, like those born on a Thursday: portraying smartness is inevitable. (We all remember singing: …Wednesday’s child is kind of heart; Thursday’s child is very smart; Friday’s child will never part…) I was one of those smart ones born on a Thursday. Taking advantage of my expanse of the uterus, I moved, rotated, danced and swam in the space my mother had to offer. As a result of which, I landed up chocking myself with something meant to provide nutrition- The umbilical cord. And, so when I was delivered, I was all blue out of lack of oxygen, lack of nutrition.

People believe that a child born with this cord around their neck is born with blessings from God Hanuman. But, at that instance, neither my mother nor the doctors or nurses wanted such a blessing. There was chaos, utter chaos.

The nurses immediately carried me to another operation theater, where I was operated right after birth. My mother lay on her bed, screeching- doing something that if done by me would surely make her smile. She believed she’d lost me. She was out of control. None out of my grandmother, grandfather, uncles and aunts could stop her from whining. She knew I was dead. She knew that I was never born. She knew that the pain she bore for nine whole months bore her no fruit. She knew that I just wasn’t there!

There isn’t any suspense for you know I survived, or else this autobiography wouldn’t have been there. This chapter could have been the last one, if this was to be a biography. But, that didn’t happen. The girl, for whose birth my mother had craved for, for all the four years since her marriage, was there. The Gods were in no mood of disappointing her any more. I lived. The chaos passed away, and I was brought- alive!

My mother’s pain did subside, even though the pain of my father not being there with her during this hard situation still did not seem to cease. Rather, even after holding me in her arms, she had a reason to be angry! This reason was given to her by, not me, but her mother who had all this while been telling people of the town in the hospital that my mother was crying because she’d had a daughter! And, this was believed by the masses; after all it’s a common thing in India, something that accounts for the low sex ratio.

But eventually, I was born! With blessings from Hanuman (maybe) I survived. With constant prayers of my mother and father for a daughter, (maybe) I survived. With the perfect timing of the doctor and nurses, I survived. I survived, and was thus, BORN.

- आ कां क्षा .