Parental Bloopers

I still remember the day, I knelt in front of the altar with my very pretty wife by my side. She looked so beautiful and I felt my heart skipped a beat every time I brushed my gaze on her glowing face. It was the day the parish priest in the little town of Cuncolim in South Goa had just pronounced us man and wife. For both of us, marriage was a huge task accomplished and an achievement in itself given the fact that we belonged to two very different cultures and religions. I remember a lot of naysayers telling me that life will change after marriage. That all the love will diminish when reality and finances settle in. But apart from a few arguments here and there and a few fist fights (sometimes beyond) being thrown in to dramatise the whole relationship, a lot otherwise was just the usual. And it continued to be the usual till that one day! That one day after which, life for Soumya and me was never meant to be the same. That day when I was parading up and down against the white wall of the nursing home's corridor, my brotherin-law was busy making a video in order to record the viii Parental Bloopers expressions that were expected to be expressed. With all the storm of thoughts that was swirling in my mind, I was hardly cognitive of his presence; leave alone the video. I could constantly, feel a lump in my throat that I'm sure was my heart. The phrase 'having the heart in the mouth' was actually experienced by someone before me who contributed this phrase to the rest of mankind. Each time, I noticed someone coming out of the operation theatre, the lump in my throat stopped working and moved up by an inch. An endoscopy would have proven this fact. And then there it was - the moment that I had been waiting for the last nine months. The first time I heard the cry, it was obviously like music to the soul. I didn't know that the cry would be repeated so often that the feeling of 'music to the soul' was about to change to the 'Sunday evening Doordarshan music' pretty soon. But for now, there he was! Wrapped in a white cloth. Looking absolutely divine. The cry was different from the usual but who cared. All that mattered at that point in time was... He had arrived. My son. Soumya's and my first offspring. Whoever said that 'Life changes after marriage!' Life actually changes after kids. The next three hundred and sixty five days witnessed our life go through all kinds of ups and downs. Our love for each other and our fights with each other were like never before. The relationship had reached extreme weathers. Preface ix All because of the presence of one tiny little human being in our life. It was an obsession that we wanted everything to be perfect for him. We wanted the cleanest of the cleans and the healthiest of the healthy. And we strived and struggled our butts off to ensure that he got that. We had given up on our sleep, our relationships, our friendships, everything, just to ensure that this one little soul was happy in life! But then, was he really happy? Just when life had started settling down for us or so we had badly wanted to imagine, we had no clue of another similar day coming to revive that ruckus in our life! The day when both of us helplessly sat on the bed and held hands and cried. We didn't know if we were prepared and at the same time, we couldn't imagine taking a step that would leave us with a sense of remorse for the rest of our beautifully planned lives. Over the next few days however, it was the pain of regret that witnessed victory as we decided that our son deserved a sibling. There was no turning back since then and today as we look back we are glad that we decided what we decided. However, from a learning from life's situation's perspective, I believe a slightly different outlook toward parenting could have worked a charm in our life. For starters, we took parenting too seriously and in the bargain, we never really stopped to enjoy the whole process to sit back and watch the kids grow.