When, as a father, I am loving the whole process, what it must be feeling like to be a mother once again…. bringing a new life to this world. My sincere tribute to Indira, every mother and every girl child in this world.

It is a miracle, how the mother facilitates the creation of the cell, multiplication of it, then the formation of various parts of the body – internal and external, then the addition of the soul. Feeling every movement of the child in the womb, relishing every moment, though with a certain amount of anxiety whether she is doing everything possible to help the child emerge in the world hale and hearty.

Though I have been traveling a lot, I have been completely involved in every moment of the last nine months experiencing the pleasure of observing, anticipating, interacting and sharing with Indira.  Mallika became integral to most of the interactions and observations, joining us to innumerable ultrasound scans, each time observing the movements of the child in the womb, trying to identify the eyes, nose, mouth and limbs and enjoying the child’s activities there in.

This Monday, May 23rd 2011, the baby emerged at 12:00:48 pm, not without her share of adventure.- with two opposite loops of the umbilical cord around the neck. The doctors were surprised that why Indira is going through such a struggle to push the child out. The child was stuck at the entrance and was not emerging out, only to realize that there are two twists of the cord around the neck when the head emerged.

Looking at the child’s perspective, what must she have gone through. From the serene, comfortable, fluidy and predictable world inside without much of noise and light, the emergence into the world of pollution in every sense and that too to fight with the cords around her neck to emerge.

Everything is different and strange in the outside world – temperature, sounds, lights, touch and feel… the first few hours and days are certainly traumatic.

“The lifeline, the cord that fed me over the last nine months has been snapped. The heart has to beat to keep me alive, the lungs have to pump with my breath bringing in oxygen. My mother has to help me feed and I have to know how to feed, more important, my mother has to produce enough feed to feed me… I do not know about functioning of my system… I do not know how it works.. how does it handle what I drink, how does my body feel about what goes in…  everyone at home are waiting in anticipation… and I do not recognize them by appearance though I might have heard feeble noises when in the womb.. how do I relate the noise to the appearance…”…

What a challenging first week it is for a child and also for the mother… the emotional, physical, mental, spiritual, social…. the journey of bringing a new life is amazing. No experience in this world can come anywhere close to this….

My salutations to every mother and every girl child….