Pangs of Guilt

It is 3 am at night and I am breastfeeding my son and writing this blog on my mobile. He did not demand to be fed by his screams. I was just checking him if he's sleeping and saw him sucking his palm, which he does when he is very hungry. I immediately picked him up and started feeding him. For producing this breast milk, I consume a lot of healthy (and hence obviously costly) foods. And to make and serve all these good foods we buy, we have brought a maid all the way from Guwahati who charges us a lot. But we are more than happy to do all these for our baby. To supervise her and to help my newborn son, my mother in law is here whose is like the second mother to my son, since she took more care of him more than me, right from the day he was born. My family too came to meet him with a huge, heavy sack of gifts and a thick gold chain. Such is the fate of my son. So fortunate, so blessed.
The other day we were going for just a routine checkup to Fortis. Costly but still we keep doing that just to ensure that not even a small illness should catch him. We had a one hour wait there because the doctor had not arrived. Immediately, me and my husband had this amazing idea to go to have kebabs in a nearby restaurant. We had a heavy breakfast but still we were hungry for kebabs. We crossed the road and reached the restaurant. Outside the shop, a scene shocked me to my core. A beggar lady of my age who had a baby boy of the age of my son, shook her bowl of coins begging for money. Her bowl had only two Re1 coins. In this chilling cold she held her naked baby close to her chest only with a thin, torn dupatta. The child was sucking his palm wildly exactly like my son does when he is hungry. His mother was patting his back, trying to comfort him. But she was not even trying to breastfeed him. May be she did not have breast milk to feed him since she herself doesn't have food to eat. How will her body produce milk? Did she not love her child like the way I do? My world collapsed under my legs. Here we were enjoying every possible luxury. Costly vaccinations, routine checkups, best possible food, costly baby products, throwing away parties for his birth and what not. We can’t stand even an iota of trouble to touch our child. But what is the fault is this young lady that her child and she herself doesn't even get the most basic need, that is, food. 

Now I will shift abruptly to another topic. I ponder a lot about The supernatural power. My belief in Him keeps changing according to what I see around me. This time, after I was blessed with my son, my faith in Him shooted up. But again the faith broke when I saw this young lady with her newborn. What was the sin committed by this lady, that, most probably, she herself was born in family where one-time meal for a day was a luxury, where daughters are not wanted, no roof over the head; she must have been unwillingly raped in the streets at night by strangers. What was her sin that she has to see her child in so much hunger? I have no answer. Now I must mention that I am totally surrounded by people in family and society by people who have firm faith in God and who have every possible explanation as to why God does such cruel things to people. Such people will come up with an explanation that why doesn’t this girl work somewhere? But I feel that if a person is consistently so hungry all the time, will they have the ability of even thinking what is “opportunity” for them , or “where” to find the “opportunity to work”? All they can think is where to get food and feel relieved temporarily. Her son will probably eventually grow up without any lessons to learn in childhood, without knowing the difference between good and bad, he probably will go about to do anything to quest his hunger. So, friends, I would just like to know your thoughts, and the other side of view. Why God discrimated amongst His own children? Why some people get too much from birth and some don’t even get the basic food? Isn’t the innocence of every baby born same?

The picture of the lady with her child got imprinted in my mind; I feel guilt while enjoying every luxury. Even though we all try to help out unfortunate people when we can, but that’s too small to make any difference, and yes, we all are too selfish to compromise on our family’s luxury. We all have a very good explanation that we work very hard to earn this money, so we have the right to fulfill all our passions. Which is true. Very true. We study hard, we tore such tough competitions, struggled so much to get to the position we are in right now. And obviously after that, we WILL fulfill all our passions from the money earned. And hence the vicious circle is continuing generations after generations and will continue forever.

Giving life to a Life !!

I stood there in the washroom with awe and shock as I saw those two red lines in the pregnancy test kit. I was not expecting this. I came out with the strip, showed it to my husband and said: "Positive" with a long, hung face. To my surprise, a huge smile flashed on his face (it’s a very rare gift that you get to see, considering his sober nature) and he said “That’s great news! You are going to be a great mom for a little angel! ”.  And as they say, smiles are contagious, his one attacked me too. My mind flashed through a lot of stories I have heard from my female friends, seniors and relatives and mostly, movies of course, where ladies jump at the positive news of pregnancy but husbands become silent and nervous at the thought of the huge extra responsibility. I felt if my life partner is so eager to take up all the responsibilities, then may be in this field I will get through with much lesser responsibilities and why not experience this phase. I was anyway bored of my job and wanted something new in my life. And trust me, later on, now I know how wrong my calculation was about me having much lesser responsibilities.

We kept visiting our gynae and every ultrasound showed us our growing-up baby’s images, it always increased the feel of attachment for our baby. Sometimes, I felt he showed resemblances of my husband and he used to feel the opposite (as usual, our thoughts HAVE to be opposite!). Pregnancy went good; my doctor said it is almost perfect!! J

Mostly, I loved the attitude of people close to me, they always said positive things. Always! It felt wonderful. I was pampered all the time. All friends in NCR made out time to visit me with some or the other very-thoughtful gifts. People in office opened doors for me, always left their chairs for me to sit whenever the area was crowded. I had lady friends in office who were also expecting and we had a great time discussing all small details of day-to-day pregnancy issues with them. Female senior colleagues were like an encyclopedia of information to us from their past experiences. They mentally prepared us very well for delivery and new-born baby care, and the reasons to enjoy each experience. Even while on roads, I saw respect in people’s eyes, instead of their head-to-toe-scan-predator-type eyes. And, yes, most importantly, even the laziest of husbands (like mine) keep offering to help in some household work or the other. And for some strange reason, they seem to love you more than ever. All these were enough to compensate for the various kinds of back/leg aches and nausea that are normal in pregnancy!

Now comes the deadliest part.. my baby was delivered after 14 hours of labor pain.. pain was unbearable ! During the labor pains, I was extremely angry on simply everyone around me because they all say its “NORMAL” delivery… nothing is ACTUALLY normal in that pain I was in (when I must mention , I have a good enough capacity to handle physical pain , I am not a delicate girl , I am a tough tomboy girl). There came a time when I thought I would die silently inside the huge oxygen mask on my face. On the top of that ,the two young lady doctors handling my delivery case, were laughing and gossiping on all sorts of weird topics in the world. Starting from sexy lipstick shades and designer saris to why Fortis hospital was the worst hospital they ever worked for in their whole career. And then an interesting topic came up. Some surgeon named Rakesh had resigned from Fortis unexpectedly. It seems he was under real mental stress due to what Fortis had given him for his career as compared to what he deserved. Lot of negative stories were going on as to what what had happened with Rakesh during his job at Fortis.  Seems like he love-married a lady doctor from Fortis itself, had a son and later on had a divorce with her, who still works in Fortis and now has  another lover  AND……. there I was crying and screaming, as if this Rakesh was a very close family member of mine who was about to die that day itself due to all miseries that had happened with him. During this Rakesh story only, I delivered my baby via vacuum pump suction. Then , the lady doctors HAD to stop the Rakesh story and I heard them saying “Hey Maryam, it’s a handsome BOY !! ”. The whole environment changed thereafter. All the nurses out shouted the news happily to each other and to my family members, whistled and started demanding sweets from Lutfur. My mother in law and hubby started making phone calls to important members in the family. In the meanwhile, they cleaned and heated up the baby and placed him on my lap.  Trust me, he was the cutest ever kid I had seen in my whole life. I kissed him and he smiled in his sleep. Tears due to all the pain I had suffered started flowing….. uncontrollably. Tears of the extreme pain I was in after the delivery and happiness at the same time.