THE FEELING OF NOT BEING TOGETHER

THE FEELING OF NOT BEING TOGETHERMissing someone who is not there is humane but it has been a strange and heart wrenching feeling that we three could not get together. Since we were at different places during the final stages of pregnancy, we both used to share a joke about me getting the good news on phone and eventually it happened too. I was not present there at the time of birth so I missed the chance of being with the mother and the baby, later next day when I transferred the baby to a better equipped hospital ,my wife did not even know what was happening to the baby. That travel on Delhi roads in an ambulance shook me hard, the feel of fatherhood had arrived in fact it was drilled deep in my head by the hard reality of our baby girl being unwell. The dreaded sound of that ambulance siren pierced my heart more than my ears, perhaps I was not listening I was just thinking what will happen next.That day I went through an entire life, its like a magic how the love for your child appears in your heart when u see the baby first time. The love grew stronger every time I saw her, I looked at the tiny eyes though they were open for a little while, I was praying silently and sometimes talking to the baby in my heart, I was telling her to get well and go to her mother with me. I even imagined how would she look when she grows up, I thought about the games we would play together. It was a struggle between life and death, a fight between hope and the inevitable. When the doctor called me I knew what he had to tell me, he gave me the news and my heart skipped a beat when I saw the the baby breathing, my moist eyes turned towards doctor , he probably understood my question but thrashed my hopes by telling me that baby was on ventilator and the chest movement was due to forced oxygen into dead lungs. I froze, did not know what to say, suddenly something moistened my hands, I saw few tear drops on my palm.Everything was flashing past my mind, my eyes were seeing what we had planned for our baby, we were playing together, we were shopping together, we were happy together but then we never got together they were just our dreams going through my mind, the cold unmoving reality was lying in front of me along with the feel of not being together.