An experience to last a lifetime!

Nobody ever told me how much I would miss being pregnant long after the much anticipated event of child birth would be over! The sheer trepidation and joy of waiting for the baby, witnessing all the myriad changes in your body, experiencing the miracle of it all…it is an incomparable experience! Here are some snippets!

A humongous appetite:  I wish I had a picture of my wondering yet supportive husband staring at me devouring an entire plate of noodles and marvelling at my sudden change in appetite. 6 months pregnant, I was ravenous every few hours and just couldn’t get enough to eat. I even remember eyeing my brother’s unfinished burger thinking, ‘Hmm….maybe he is not going to finish that!’

Belly dance!  I was seven months pregnant and had just set an assignment to a class of college going kids, when suddenly my baby decided to do the tango. The newspaper that was conveniently resting on my belly went blip up and blup down! I’ll never forget the stunned look of a student eyeing me with suspicion!

Spicy cravings: Why did green chillies suddenly smell so aromatic and enticing? Never did I know that all of our lives and all of our bodies are controlled by that one ubiquitous element- Hormone! Suddenly I was gorging down green chillies by the dozen and loving every minute of it! Of course my husband now blames me for my daughter’s fiery temperament!

Becoming philosophical : Why did the trees, the grass, the flowers and the sky suddenly look so much more awe inspiring? The very thought of sharing so much beauty with a little toddler walking by my side, would give me goosebumps. If ever there was an atheist in me, this was the end of her! Forever I would be in awe of the sheer perfection with which the lord crafts a new flower and with as much consummate ease, a new human being.

Good food, healthy babies: Suddenly taking care of one’s diet didn’t seem low priority at all! All the green vegetables and boring fruits appeared to be far more attractive than the hitherto alluring junk food. Trust me expecting mothers- feeding yourself can be a lot easier than feeding a fussy child…take advantage of the situation while you can!

Bye bye OTC medicines: As a doctor’s daughter I grew up a happy pill popper. Only to be shattered when I learnt that my Crocins would betray me when I needed them the most! Thanks to my mom’s ‘Yoga for pregnancy’ book, I was introduced to a more holistic understanding of my body and realised the importance of overall physical well being. Sure, the child starts changing your perceptions even before he has arrived!

Throwing my modesty to the winds!  Many a woman has shared this ironical thought with me! In most Indian communities, women are taught modesty with earnest passion from the day they are born……only to be forced to shed all their inhibitions one fine day when they are ready to procreate! Not only do our bodies go through this great overhaul, we are also expected to be absolutely cool with showing a lot more skin to hospital staff, attendants and doctors! Nobody ever told us how gross the entire birthing process was!

All worth it! As any mother will testify, years afterwards the lasting memory is that of the first sight of a healthy, bonny, beautiful baby! All the stiff joints, the terrible back pain and the awkwardness of being so large that you can’t see your toes….all those memories get blurred , what stays with you for a lifetime is the wonderful experience of seeing life recreate itself. Amen.

He's watching you!

I vividly remember a prank that my brother and his-in-cahoots wife played on unsuspecting us in a log cabin at Lake George, USA. The panic attack that I experienced at that time was matched only by my ensuing embarrassment for not having guessed their plan! The game was simple, we would all ask questions to this online intelligent entity (www.peteranswers.com) who would answer our every question, but the catch that we missed was that my brat of a brother would be the privileged one to type in the questions; turns out he keyed in the answers under our collective noses! And there were three other very intelligent ones in that very room, I might add!

The feeling that there was this invisible phantom following us around was the spookiest feeling I ever got! But guess what?! It’s been following me around again- this time while browsing the internet!

Sometime back I compiled a wish list on a prominent Ecommerce website, of all the games and toys that I would like to order for my children when time and resources permit. And lo behold! Suddenly every website I now visited had got wind of my ‘private’ wish list. They pester me everywhere I go like a whining child who has learnt of my intentions of buying him a gift!

Something that reminds me of a presumptuous Search Engine that very helpfully offers to correct the spelling of my search, even though I may be completely confident of the content!

Or that officious auto correction feature on my android OS phone that interferes every time I key in a basic Hindi message. A ‘Kya’ becomes a ‘Kay’ and ‘ka’ turns into ‘is’! After some diligent training my previously anglicised android phone is now semi- literate in Hindi!

Or the spell checker in every word document program that prods you to spell the word 'behaviour' as 'behavior', lest we deteriorate into British English from American English!

This over-the-shoulder AI trend is quite disturbing. Consider cookies stalking your every movement, piecing together bits of an individual ‘you’, all to facilitate the work of canny marketers - that should make Edward Snowdens out of most of us who value our privacy above everything else! Not for us the sneeze and change FB status lifestyle! Neither the ubiquitous selfie clicked on any given opportunity!

As everything else there is a flip side to this. One could argue that tracking consumer behaviour on the internet has led to the most benefits for the customer herself. Before we appreciate that nebulous need completely, the internet cookies have done that thinking for us. Isn’t that allowing for a better, easier consumer experience?

In an increasingly materialistic and consumerist society- Yes.

But speak for yourself- I would probably run away and take refuge like the famous Bengali actress- Suchitra ‘recluse’ Sen!