Surabhi

It is said and believed widely that creation of a new life is miraculous.I always heard it and never believed because of the traditional youth notion of being given a reason about everything.Destiny seemed to be quite interested in convincing me over this point and it was then when some of my hopes shattered.Being in India, and belonging to a normal middle class environment, I was all satisfied with the belief of having a brother instead of a sister(it was even more inspired when Nidhi grabbed my so called “living – essentials” as a teenager).

Life wanted me to be even more troubled I guess. Surabhi, a hope admist the hopes shattered, came into our lives, bringing a wonderful warm morning in the sheer coldness of the beginning of January. My aunt woke me up with the sentence, ” God has blessed us with Laxmi once again”.I could hardly believe my ears, and the reason was I was looking forward to a wake up call that would have been something like this – “God has blessed us with Kanhaiya”. I woke up just to realise a silence that everyone was trying to hide in an artificial happiness, trying to live with ideas of 21st century. My grandfather pretended to be the happiest man on the earth that morning.

The optimism shown by my grandparents was actually a reason to be proud, to be proud of the fact that education is changing the face of our society. I saw her wrapped in extremely soft clothes, the 10 seconds she opened her eyes for, were full of some kind of innocent magic. The tender hands, the delicate fingers ….her small fists….were ready to go with all her might and show the world that she had an identity – different, special and powerful. She was as soft as a delicate petal of rose, i realised it when I touched her cheeks. She squeaked by the touch of my cold hands, and I was there by her side, still trying to understand, was i actually fifteen years elder than her and was she actually so magical? In spite of my chirpy nature, that was one time when I was short of words. I had seen life coming into fair existence for the first time and fell in love with it.

I miss her the most today.