Blessing and Prayer

The boys arrived in completely different ways. They were blood brothers, with the same set of parents and DNA, the same race and socioeconomic background, yet, they couldn't have been more dissimilar in their arrival.



The first one was a blessing. He came, unplanned, uninvited but brought with him immeasurable joy. In the intense heat of Indian summer, he brought the rains with him. It was a July afternoon, with well-wishers nearby. He was loud and red, with eyes clamped shut and a strange birth mark on his forehead like a priests thilak. Nearby, were his aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, great-grandmother, grandaunt, everyone rejoicing when he was born. His first home was his mother's room in a house where she grew up in, in a locality where everyone knew her. He was like the bright Sun, beautiful and resplendent.

The second one was a prayer. He was wanted and planned. Born on a cold December night in New England, away from all eyes, in an unknown part of a hospital, in a new city where his parents had moved only a few months earlier. While the world outside was dark and quiet, with the stars twinkling in the frozen sky, he was born like my own fairy dust, so fragile and tender. The hospital seemed shrouded in a deep slumber. As I was lying, recovering, I couldn't wait to hold my precious little son in my arms. Some hours later, I stood, holding him, I looked out of the large hospital window. In front of me, lay a New England city, with it's churches and roads glowing slowly in the golden lights of dawn. I felt so complete.


A few moments are etched in my memory. How their skins felt crinkly like old pieces of tissue. How wispy was their hair. Looking at them, I had been awestruck by how beautiful they were. A few hours earlier, they didn't exist. And like a miracle, here they were, with a name and identity. The future in front of them. In their life of few hours, they were already a person, an individual with hidden talents, their own temperament, their own destiny. Who knows what their tiny eyes had already seen, who knew what they were thinking, what they wanted to express. I had tried to pry open their tiny fists. And on both occasion, I had felt the mystery held firmly in their clasp.

And no one can escape the visceral love and awe of a brand new baby. Even the doctor, the nurses, who have seen hundreds of births can't escape the stirrings of deep emotions when they see a new baby. It's like a ray of hope. Like a brand new day. Like writing your name on a brand new notebook at the start of a school year. With infinite possibilities and potentials. It feels like a reminder of Divine will.


In those precious moments, when nothing and everything mattered simultaneously, I had felt that some God had smiled upon me. Those tiny babies were the embodiment of everything I was and will ever be, my hopes, dreams, strengths, weaknesses, passion and love. They were the manifestation of the universe. In their tiny form, they held my past, my present and my future.

Betrayal

It shocked him, even today. Even after nearly 12 years, the sense of loss felt like a heavy weight. The years may have blunted the the piercing pain, yet each time he remembered that night when she left, his throat would ache in an odd way. Even after the many victories and achievements, piled on his table and hung neatly on the walls he knew that she had taken with her a part of him which no one or nothing could fill.

Even as a child, through those innocent days which seemed to be about everything and nothing, he had often felt that she didn't really belong to them. Yes, she had given birth to him and his brother, had looked after them with all the love and tenderness which only a mother can give, had soothed his bruises, calmed his fears, taught him, listened to him and laughed with him, there was something else which pulled her away from them. There were those rare, lazy evenings, when she would sit back with a good book. She would sigh and smile in a secret way and look out of the window as if some distant sirens beckoned her to some far-away worlds. In those moments, while she stood, tottering between the two worlds, he would often call her with some pretext or another. He wanted her back with him. And each time it happened, he felt that maybe she had been pulled a little more than the previous time, that maybe she had tilted so much that she could not come back. He would feel a rush of relief when she would finally turn her head and gaze back at him smiling as if she had enjoyed a mini vacation.

She left her mark on every corner of their home. The bed sheets were her choice, the color of the towels, the candles on the table, the array of spices in the kitchen. Her days stretched endlessly from morning till night, looking after him, his brother, his father or obsessing over the code she was working on. She would work meticulously, looking into each detail. He had once asked her about her office. She had explained that she was a developer. "What do you develop?" he had asked. "Computer programs", she replied. At that time, it was all mysterious, the strange looking sentences, the dark screens through which she would squint looking for "bugs". But he felt she must be really smart. He couldn't wait to grow up to be like her.

His idyllic days were sometimes punctuated by sudden disappearances. His mother would lock herself in her room, refusing food, refusing to see anyone. It happened sometimes, she would ask something  from dad, a small favor. His refusal to comply would shake her. Most of the time, it seemed what she asked for were too small to matter. "Can you please do the dishes tonight?", she would ask dad. To her, his refusal would feel like betrayal. As if someone had cut her through with a knife.
And on one such night, she left. She never came back. For several months, he felt that one day she will return. But she didn't. She was not there when he got his first crush, the day he graduated, the day his brother's fever shot up till 102, she did not meet his teacher on the parent teacher conferences. She left a gaping hole in his life.

That night, she tilted too far. "Why did she leave for such trivial reasons?", asked friendly well-wishers, puzzled at this sudden anomaly. What they didn't know was the steady erosion which corroded the bonds which held her to them. Once the bond snapped, she broke free. She took with her the warmth with which she had filled their lives, leaving a man and two boys in their empty house.