Aisha

That vivacious happy little thing is the biggest wonder of my life. My daughter.....how I love to say she is my daughter, love to claim her as my own. And as she grows she creates in me the need to love her more than the previous day, the urge to live only to love her as if she is my very source of sustenance.

The sound of her laughter filling the house, her incessant baseless demands for say, a torn piece of paper or the cap of a medicine bottle, her mispronounced words like 'peeese' to 'please' or 'sol-ly' to 'sorry' or even better...the air escaping from the gaps of her teeth when she tries to pronounce a word that has an 's' or 'z' to it, the sight of her soft plump feet happily tapping on the floor as she saunters from one room to another, her holding you by the finger and pulling you to the fridge to give her her heart's desire: chocolates!!, her promptly coming near you to check your temperature if you say you're not feeling well, her emotional cajoling when you are mad at her....all these make me long for her to madness!!!

and whew! Her constant wish to hear nursery rhymes on youtube or worse, when she demands to be sung to...that's when you actually feel like your teeth's gonna fall off. She wouldn't want you to stop.

Best is when daddy dear sings...the lyrics are all wrong. And when he runs out of rhymes it is the occasional hindi or english song and aisha is all "na na nah".

Of late, with yet another little babe on the way, I haven't been able to attend wholly to her. And because of that anger keeps fuelling in me. Baseless as it might sound somehow it makes me feel she would stop wanting mama's attention after asking for it so much and not getting it. I fight hard to keep up to her needs and demands but as the pregnancy nears full term my physical self fails.

I have learnt that where motherhood can be constant sacrifice it can also be an extremely abnormal jealous need to guard her child from someone who tries to come too close to her (I think that arises from the fear of being outsted from her position of motherhood !!).

Where motherhood can be unconditional love, it can also be unconditioned anger towards her child for reasons a mother would best keep to herself.

Where with the onset of motherhood a woman could love every child she comes across, she could also be this most thoughtless selfish woman god could ever create!!

Personally speaking, I also know that besides all these qualities that have percolated down into my veins with the onset of motherhood, I do not want my children to be indebted to me because I am their mother. Neither do I want them to be dutybound towards their parents or be burdened by filial obligation. The only bond that should bind them to us must be love and love alone.

My days in Shillong

"I dreamt I went to Manderly again."----The opening line of Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca is so hauntingly nostalgic; it reminds me of my school days in Shillong. Don Bosco Square....Gosh......! It was the most happening place on earth. Six schools merged at one place--Don Bosco Square. Margaret’s (mine), Mary's, Edmunds (gosh the guys...!!!), Anthony's and a little further on Peter's and LC(guys always fell for them...!). Ahh those Edmund's concerts which today I remember as so very English, those inter-school games when we got to see good looking guys and have the best chowmein in the world, the Garrison Ground fetes, the occasional visits to Abba, the Saturday/Sunday morning walks, the bright sun, the gentle breeze and a perfect state of mind. Above it all the place where I stayed...Greenfields. I have spent the best years of my life there. I see Mary creeping out like a worm from under my arms when I am trying to do some last minute studies while she did hers in the toilet, the nights we spent on warming our coffees under our study lamps, the nights when it rained and we in our dormitory stuck out our hands and feet from the windows, the nights when we had khaini....Things always happened at night for fear of being caught except on one occasion. That was the day when we had waved at a couple of guys from our dorm. Uncle caught us. Unacceptable behaviour from a very respectable privately-run hostel. Nothing much happened except a very good scolding and a warning. Oh yes how could I forget the penguins--twin brothers who looked like keanu reaves. We kept running from this window to that trying to see BIRDS as we called them. Oh yes and our little shopping days with just a 100 bucks in hand was so much fun... That was my blissful happy world and today when the days are no more they are still an inspiration to stay happy.