I got a special Birthday gift this year – Though it arrived a week late

(I guess it’s not entirely co-incidental that this post of mine comes right after my post for my valentine. I promise I am going to keep this post very simple, I have heard that my days of fame are gone, someone is replacing me with better blogs, more on it in the post)

28 years - too early for a mid-life crisis
28 years is a long time and that is the time I have spent since I was born. This birthday was nothing extraordinary, nothing very special per se. My parents are here, and they were very excited about my birthday, just the way they were when I was 8. My wife was also excited, but I was not feeling good. I had an issue with life getting spent. I want to remain young, I want to go back to my age of carelessness. The whole week I kept on thinking about it. One more 27th April gone, and for the entire week after that I was contemplating philosophically about my life at 28, was almost in the middle of a mid-life crisis.

The Silent Run
And then it turns out that the Monday after my 28th birthday, exactly a week later, would become the happiest day of my life. Morning Abha had complained about some small issues she had with herself and grudgingly I thought of taking half a day leave and going with her to the doctor. As I was driving from my house to the hospital I realized that everyone was very bubbly for the first 2 kilometers and all of them slept of for the rest 15 kms. Not very unexpected though.

What is a good pain?

But what came next was unexpected. Doctor checked Abha and she said, “Aaj Admit hona padega”. Abha was so happy listening to this, that even doctor got a little tensed. Very happily running to the lift to get admitted on the third floor, my wife entered the hospital building that she was not going to leave for next 1 week. It was about 11 when she got admitted, and she would have never thought that those smiles would turn in to painful shouts soon. About 1:30 in the noon, after a few medications, there she was lying there on that bed, not able to take the pain, as the doctors entered, checking her saying “Good Pains”!! If my mom would not have been there, I know what she would have told the doctors but she restricted the prefixes to say “Pain is no good”. As per the hospital norms only my mom was allowed by her side in the room. Me and my dad waited outside in the waiting room. It was about 2, when I started strolling, and It was about 4 when I stopped, and I swear on the collection of audio cassettes, that those were the longest 2 hours of my life. Waiting for the doctor to tell me what happened. I remembered how Abha was joking in between her shouts just 2 hours before that and no doctor in there would have imagined that at 4.

Life Changed at 4:01 PM
It was 4:10 when the guard called us (my mom was also with us by then) to the room, and there came a young little lady doctor, with a small bundle in her hand, a white cloth covered young life.

“It’s a baby boy”

Doesn’t matter, that I had been expecting a baby girl for last 8 long months and had also finalized a name for her, the baby boy was fantastic. He was so cute and pink. His eyes weren’t opening completely, he was powdered, his small face had a pair of eyes, a nose, a mouth, 2 ears, all in the small area smaller than my fingers. Then came the question that scared me,

“You are the father? Hold him?”

How can I with my rough hands, which so careless that I never drank a cup of tea without spoiling my shirt, hold this beautiful young life, new to this world, so delicate, so fragile. But she did not give me time to respond. And he was given right in my hands. My little angel.

The moment I took him in my hands, the lights went off, I could not see him for 3-4 seconds. I remember he moved his legs inside the cloth, I felt it. And then the lights were back, and I saw him closing his eyes, which were open when no one saw. And then he did something with his face to throw a lot of gurgling saliva out on my face which was so near to his. My angel littered my face with his new found love of slosh. Never did I think anything cuter happened to me before.
I thought of my wife, who was so much like a young (won’t use the word little, as pregnancy hardly makes one look little) girl, who went in laughing giggling and smiling -telling me not to worry. We stayed in the hospital for 5 days after that till Saturday and the doctors who came to visit her everyday would joke with her about how she harassed them. Center of attraction in my family was clear, with all four of us now concentrated all the time around a small cradle. We would watch him sleeping, we would wait and feel so happy when he opened his eyes, we loved watching him smile in his sleep, moments that were so simple and yet so very emotional.

[And this little boy of mine blogs. check him out on http://happykehappythoughts.blogspot.com . Yesterday, a friend told me that he blogs better than me, and that makes me a little jealous. But its actually quite difficult to compete with this young infant enthusiasm and curiosity. I am writing this blog to make mine look better than his. I hope mine is a good effort. ]

Everyday there is some first of his which makes us excited about the day. Suddenly we are 5-6 people in my house and no one is having time, whether its day or night.

There are a few things that I would like to write about which might not be as interesting as the blog but which I think I need to acknowledge.

Abha, I love you; and I am so very proud of you. I could closely see in her, what motherhood means to a female. And I have started loving my mom all the more after this. I don’t think any man on this earth can give what a mother gives a child – life. I know he is our son, but I for my life would never claim that he is as much mine as he is yours. He is more of yours for ever and I will win him over to make him mine over the coming years.
My parents are my family’s biggest support system. We would be nothing without you. Though I know that I am no more your rock star, you have got a new one.

I would like to thank the hospital staff and the doctors, who made the dream that we saw for years come true. If you are in Pune, and if you are thinking which hospital should you be going to, if your wife is pregnant, I recommend Jehangir Hospital (Dr. Manjiri Kulkarni). They are very helpful, very patient and very understanding. Thank you Jehangir.

Well now I bet, my blog is better than Happy’s.

Happy who?
You Haven’t Met happy yet?
Though It would be wrong to confess here, I like both happy and his blog more than me and my blog. Meet him now.