The unceasing pain

Tears could not stop flowing, as my 18 week baby passed away in my palm. She probably did not manage to live more than 18 seconds. I had only myself to blame for the rest of my life.
Every time I see my 6 year old I realise this joy could have been doubled. If I had not trusted my gut, if I had not moved from Mumbai, if somehow we could manage to keep her safe for another 6 weeks I would not have had the misfortune of burying my 18 week old Rosie in Glasnevin cemetery.

I was told probably it was lack of faith. But God when was I ever strong. I believed but I often doubted, it was more of self doubt covered in reliance on God. I feel hard to comprehend that this is God's will for me, my wife and my child who longed for a sibling.

I searched for my baby in every new born after that and looked for those toes I could touch on that ill-fated day in January. I moan for the toys I could not buy her. I moan for the first sounds that would come from her. I could not fathom that life's most natural experience turned out to be so painful for us.
I mourned that day and the next and the weeks and months that go by. I tend to forget her in times of joy, thinking she was not viable. But there she was fully formed, with every part visible and tiny and beautiful.
If only I had persisted to be less smart and more foolish to stay back in Mumbai. If only I'd kept my selfish gut instincts under check I would have been caring for a 4 month baby.
How would I tell my only daughter I fucked up her chances to have a sibling for life, to care , share and much more. Yet I felt happy today without my 18 week old baby, I chose to forget her, thinking it was never viable and an act of God. I could forget it all away so conveniently, yet she lies there in the cold all alone, rotting away. Her soul smiling at my sorrow which will one of you day fade away like my words. Hoping to see her some day and the creator would be kind enough to show us what would have been!

List of things to be thankful for

Birth : You gotta  be thankful for the day you are born, might not realise it soon but still has to be a first in the chronological order of your life and nor will you be able to type after you die, so best to jot it down now and may be repeat again if you get a chance.

Loving mother : You know you have a loving mother when she takes on the world for your well being and of course for your father too in a intangible manner as he influences your life to a huge extent. I hope I can elicit better words from my daughter on my contributions.

Decent school life : A bunch of good teachers and good friends and perhaps good grades build the foundation of our lives

Youth and college : Thank God for getting the wisdom to survive and preventing from falling astray as these are the most vulnerable times of our lives where we have the least control over our good senses.

First flight, first car, first love :These are the high flying moments in our lives and probably the enthusiasm in most cases does not last long but still blessed to have some memory of it.

Brotherhood : Your life and your loved ones become most precious when someone survives an accident or illness. I believe for me this is the biggest thing to be thankful for.

First job/ career : The engine of your life if you get into a balanced career, it could give you the thrills and at times the chills but the experiences make you what you are as a human being, social being and a worker who supports his industry and at times leads and if destined leaves an impression on those around to inspire or in rare cases leave a legacy behind.

Marriage : A special feeling to have found the special one and a challenging one for the rest of life to understand each other but still loving to live with each other and care for each other, fight with each other and tread along in life

First child : Quite an experience and as the baby grows you see God's love, unconditional love which only a child or a mother can give. This is where you believe that only God could create such a thing.

To be continued...

Heartache

I never realised that losing a parent could cause never ending heart burn. Every morning every night you wake up with that feeling you don't have that person to go back to. Every time you felt sympathy for someone who lost a loved one was not enough to get consoled nor could you share with a sibling for fear of halting his recovery from the loss. And probably the pain could not be shared with anyone who has not felt the same loss.
Every time you thought about the millions of healthily aging folks you fail to accept God's will and think that you are being meted punishment for your sins. Faith is questioned but prayer is the only solace and comfort in such times.
Counting your blessings and looking at the good times make us realise good times do cone to an end and the present needs to be cherished. These fears creep in everytime a loved one falls sick, faith starts wavering., nights seem to disturb you more but a prayer on the lips gets you through the night and your trials gets a new beginning in the morning full of hope and healing.
God's love prevails over us and his will too just like he did not punish Jonah nor the people of Nineveh despite their sins and was willing to forgive them if they chose God over evil .

The benchmark life

My best friend at school accompanied me home to find out what language I speak at home. He was wondering despite all his efforts he could not score better than me in one subject of language i.e English. I could never explain how I scored better and to an extent I enjoyed his discomfort.Only in the last competitive exam he scored better and that laid to rest all his doubts over my supremacy in the subject and our friendship flourished. As for me I blamed my poor scores on the previous night matinee show which was more important than the exam and in return it saved my friendship.
However this was not the first time I was bench-marked. I did not realize at school that I enjoyed being a leader ( now I don't..reasons to be explained later) but in the interest of studies when my mom asked me to stay off the elections for the school captain I stepped back reluctantly. However I campaigned for my friend who seemed to be a much better leader than me. But just like elections everywhere the best don't come first and this risk was picked up by our school principal much before the elections. So he had to chose a better loser against whom my friend could win convincingly. And they could not find anyone better than me as a last minute replacement for the guy who could defeat my friend easily in the elections.
From then on I always feared I could be become a benchmark for all the wrong reasons and I dreaded being a wrong example for many to follow, so never chose to tell my silly stories to everyone, lest they spread and chose me to be the benchmark.
This made me think how do people arrive at the benchmark. It is someone who is probably a notch (with a minuscule difference) above average, but not the best, can be easily replaced with another benchmark. At the same time the benchmark could be better than the average Joe atleast for some period of time. The kind who seem to have the potential just enough to make the mark and yet stay as a surpassable benchmark.
Last time I was being set as a benchmark by some over enthusiastic parent to convince their young son to pursue an engineering degree who exposed my fallibility that I could not even buy a house after working for 10 years. Unless you are a fallible benchmark there is no hope for the one who want to cross over, otherwise you graduate into an exception and then get less talked about.
Although being a benchmark does not mean you will be spared comparison with other benchmarks, its just that you know how the rest feel when you are the benchmark itself. At work it is no different when you or your teams get slotted as benchmarks. This results in losing a chance to tread the untried or untested path where you could stumble on a better model of doing things or atleast enjoy the diversity instead of benchmarking people

Coping in uncertain times

Today my baby kissed me for the first time when I opened my eyes after evening prayers. All this while I was thinking I did not deserve it (still I think I did not deserve) and may be I deserve being punished as I liked my mom more than my dad. Or maybe even my laziness prevented me from helping my wife with all the baby chores I was asked to do.
Not that I'm going to change or I want to change, but something inside me is choking my thought process, may be it is my mother's ill health or my work. By now it was high  time I should have got used to both - the absolute uncertainty within my area of work and absolutely certainty of the helplessness we get to see in Parkinsons. I did not even hope for a miracle even though I believe faith could move mountains. It would have been good if the disease did not have a name or better if modern science could come up with a cure in my mother's lifetime to benefit out of it or I would curse my misfortune that the cure could come up a tad earlier.
Melissa started walking when she is a little more than 13 months and probably 7 days old with 5-6 baby steps and next day I heard my brother buying a wheel chair for my mother. How I wished my mother could be hale and hearty like the old people I see around in Dublin, independent and bubbling with enthusiasm. It was not to be, I had to live with this helplessness. History would repeat itself, my mom would have nightmares about her mom and I was going to inherit the same legacy. Only the awareness that life is so futile at times has been probably been imbibed better as the days go by.
Often we hear we live in uncertain times but then death is supposed to be uncertain or is life being uncertain is preparing us for the uncertainty we might face in death. But then how does it work for those who are aware as to when and how they will die, is life more certain for them or for those who chose to take their own lives at a uncertain moment and if lucky enough to survive, are certain that life is still worth living despite the uncertainties as there is a hope that uncertainty would not stay certain all the time. Reading the above makes me think I was better off without writing or may be I'm just cleansing myself of my useless and aimless thought process.
I could only summarize I miss my mom already (when she is alive and does remember me so well) from the old times when she asked me to accompany her one more time to the market and I did not. If only I could get her favorite food, favorite saree or anything she liked one more time. Probably more than me if she could realize and enjoy every moment when she was well that life is so beautiful despite all the uncertainties. May be it was the times my mother lived in, the challenges she had to face, the stress or some reaction from the medicines we will never know.
The time we have at hand could be savoured and time we lost could only be cherished without regret if possible and the time that is to come we pray for strength to understand and perhaps even marvel at God's will. 

Labour joys

It was friday the 13th, and as usual I was thinking that I will be finished with the appointment soon and then I will be on my way back to my work waiting for a phone call to race home back and rush to the hospital. The doctor would make her causal remark to my wife - 'oh you look normal, nothing to  worry, any pain is part and parcel of pregnancy'. And I would love to add- see I knew it and I told you so. But that day the doctor said the cervix has opened up and this could be the day. We were prepared all this time but this revelation seemed a tad bit early. We diidn't wanna go home and hoped to stay around the hospital. Reluctantly we drove home, we had mixed feelings. We were happy and at the same time anxious how the delivery would go. I could talk on, but I knew I could never sense the amount of pain my wife would undergo, I could just witness it with sheer helpness.
After waiting for a day we realised it wasn't supposed to happen so soon.  Another week passed by and  we looked forward to the next friday appointment. The doctor was pleasantly surprised and this time she did not want to make a prediction and just told it could happen anytime. In all this I could recollect my wife showed weakness on the outside but seemed to be calm and composed on the inside and I was exactly the opposite. When I came back from work that evening my wife was explaining with great delight that the baby is trying to find its way down and it was happening for hours. Thank God she's so expressive that she cared to share these thoughts with me and only now as I write I realise those were blessed moments we got to experience on that day.That night as we said our prayers we did not realise that our prayers were going  to be answered very soon.
At 2:30 on  saturday night the 21st day of July my wife woke me up and told me the pains were coming just like the doctor told us. A niggling pain at the back every 5 mins and the baby trying to find its way out slowly and gently. My mother -in -law woke up and made us coffee reminding us this could be a long ordeal and she was quite a calming influence on us. We landed at the hospital thinking this would take quite some time.
My wife was taken into the casaaulty for some tests and I was called in for filling forms. A little while later my mom-in-law was right behind saying that Solly was being shifted to the labour room. It did not sink in then, only when I was inside the labout room, I realise that is going to happen so soon. The pains were growing, tears swelled in her eyes and she clasped myhands tight. The doctor was rubbing her own hands as she was woken up from sleep for this delivery, probably a routine for her. Regular contractions and the pain was growing, I did not what was happening.
Int  the midst of this commotion the doctor summoned for the suction pump and it did not seem to work. For a moment I could see blood and then chose not to look. The next moment I could hear the first tiny sounds, baby covered in blue wax kind of thing and the doctor told me it is a girl. My wife let out a cry, she turned out to be braver than I expected. My head was spinning, I'd to sit for a moment. The doctor told me if I crash she will not attend to me. Our prayers were answered, around 4:40 am baby Melissa was born. Our lives were about to change or rather blessed from that moment. On Day 1 baby was blue, on day 2 she was red and on day3 she was yellow, daignosed with Jaundice. In  a week she got my colour and the next few months we know would be spent on sleepless nights and guessing whether she looked like me or my wife.
We thanked God, thanked the doctor who lived up to her reputation and helped us with a normal delivery and a normal healthy baby.

City of Heroes

When I landed in Moscow, just as I would have expected spring chose to delay its arrival, winter was glad to overstay its welcome. Much to my surprise I was surrounded by quite a few caring folks who were ready to guide me every step lest I fall. Thankfully they were not aware I was so used to falling that it didnt matter on most of the occasions.
With the holy week coming to an end I chose reluctantly go to a nearby church and it was closed. So I chose another one the next one and much to my disillusionment that was closed too. I knew I had not done much to appease the Gods but all doubts were put to rest in the third attempt when I got a chance to enter the church.
I'd very little enthusiasm to go to the Red square, on multiple occasions I came near striking distance of the place but walked away hoping I would be there some other day. To kill my despondent thoughts I was about to splurge on a pricey tag heuer but somehow could gather myself at the last moment to turn away, only to have known later I would have probably paid 3 times the price.
It was yet another wednesday when I told my cabbie that I want to go to St Petersberg. I did not have a reason, I did not understand architecture or the language or the heritage nor did I value the history. Yet I tugged along and even if I did reason enough to find a reason I had judged long back that my reasons would never be good enough.
Saturday morning I was on the bullet train , I'd hoped the journey to be scenic but spring has deserted me long enough and I've made amends with winter. My expectations were at an astonishing low after the unexciting train journey in the bullet train kaizan which ran the 880km distance from moscow to St Petersberg in flat 4 hours. Only when the cabbie at St Petersberg told me that is the city of heroes who had held the city for 900 days before giving in during the world war, it resembled a faint chord in me, I could give my best only when I already knew that I'd lost the battle.
As he drove me to the first cathedral he showed me a few buildings, to me all of them seemed typical, european vintage they had preserved over the years. When I entered St Isaacs cathedral the atmosphere and the acoustics inside the dome structure seized me. I clicked as many times as I could but my eyes could not capture the fine architecture, the fantastic biblical paintings, I could not seek anything , I just wanted to breathe from my eyes. This was one of the best cathedrals I'd seen in my life , it seemed better than the St Peters square at vatican.
Time had stopped, I did not want to go anywhere when my cabbie called and took me to Pushkin where the famous Catherine's palace is located. It was quite a museum but somehow I was not in a mood to appreciate art and we hurried off to Peterhoff. It was quite a sight to see the palace standing tall over the bay of finland which was frozen as far as the naked eye could reach.
On our way we spent some moments in the Cathedral of Peter and Paul, it was quite a majestic structure standing tall on one side of a lake.
As we chose to unwind our day on the riverside very few were around to witness the lonely sunset at the Neva river where we were making our plans for the next day. Early morning we visited The Resurrection Cathedral which was constructed over a hundred years. On our way we took a glimpse of the famous bridges of St. Petersberg which would open up every summer to give way to commercial and cruise ships treading along the Neva river basin.
Finally it was time to visit the hermitage, the king's winter palace that housed a million paintings and artefacts which if observed carefully would take more than 3 years to cover everything. The word art never struck a chord , I was confident I would finish this visit quite soon. The first hall had Remembrandt's paintings, I looked around amused and with mischief. I was observing the people around and was pretty sure like me most of them could not appreciate art. But still I chose to have a look at the paintings. I strolled around the hall quite fast the first time, and then again the second time and then a third time. I was beginning to understand the painting , I could not believe my own eyes. As I walked around, the painting revealed themselves, a unique feature of the style was that as you viewed those paintings under the light from a distance the different facets of painting would emerge which could not be experienced from a close distance the first time. But once you notice them it stays with you even when you move closer to the painting.
As I reluctantly moved away from the paintings I could see many such halls with paintings of the great european artists of the 18th and the 19th century. I spent close to three hours in the hermitage, which is the king's winter palace now transformed into a museum and an art gallery.
Every city I visited I always chose to skip the museums but here I did not regret the decision of visiting the hermitage. This visit had transcended me from the daily monotony and mediocrity to a level of excellence and understanding I did not create or even grasp yet it made me realise that this was some magic we could only experience and capture in our memories where they would always stay unexplained as a mystery.
As I reluctantly walked out of the hermitage the next destination was the Church of the Savior on Spilled blood. The architecture, pictures on the wall, the dome , the pillars and every minute detail made me wonder how this could have been built so well and surprisingly preserved for the future generations to wonder at such great structures.
It was my last day in St Petersberg, I knew I had only a couple of hours and I wanted to visit the first cathedral I'd seen in the city for one more time. On our way back we visited the Peter and Paul Church and also checked out the first Russian ship built a 100 years ago and to this day it was preserved and functioning as a museum. My cabbie told me a story as how it was sunk on purpose in the neva river to save it from aerial attacks during world war II.
Just when I was wondering I'd visited so many cathedrals and churches very few of them was functioning as a real church. Though I do not consider myself to be religious, somewhere deep inside I longed to hear the proceedings of a church, the hymns , the worship sequence or may be even the choir. As I went to Kazaan , yet another cathedral , my prayers were partially answered , I could witness the service , but somehow I was impatient to see Isaac's cathedral one last time again.
This time when I entered there was quite a gathering inside the church, this was not a gathering of tourists, it seemed like a festive occasion for the locals where the choir was practising. I could see bishops making speeches followed by a presentation of songs from different choirs and the last song was sung by the whole group together. It was quite an experience to hear the beautiful choir supported by the acoustics of the dome based architecture on which the cathedral was built.
By the end of the trip I had the answer, I knew I was blessed enough to see one of the finest and oldest cities in Europe which had probably the world's best cathedrals and churches.