It's a boy! It's a girl!...And a slice of life lived in between these cycles

“I would love to have a daughter, of course much later”, I told this to Abraham as I was getting ready for a dinner with him.

“I want a son”, he said.

I looked at him. I smiled. A kind of a smile that only he can interpret as being a frown, waiting for him to explain.

Abraham continued, “I actually don’t mind either… but I just said that because of your remark, though I am not surprised that you said it, Sneha. C’mon … a child is a child… why bracket them into genders already”?  Of course, our discussion continued.

I tried to defend myself. Though I didn’t agree with ‘everything’ that Abraham had to say, I realised…in this case I was wrong. And, he had understood my bias, even before I had. I remember ending the discussion by saying, “true, both are treasures.” Incidentally, we had one of our best Chinese meals together that night.

 Two months down the line…

I was enjoying a lovely Kerala meal with few friends from old and a teacher. We were catching up with life and future plans.

Just when I was digging into my fish curry, rassam and rice…my teacher tells me, “Oh you've only seen my first daughter. I have a second child too.”

He smiles at the others sitting and declares with a laughter, “My second child is a son, so all further production has stopped.”

 Something happened to me. My heart ached. I looked at his face.

We all were enjoying our food. It was evident from the occasional silence.

Nearly after 2 minutes, I asked him… “Sir, did you just say all further production has stopped because you’ve had a son?” He laughed. Didn’t say anything. Others chuckled too.

 My mind immediately went back to the conversation I had with Abraham… And I told myself, “You can’t blame me for what I said that day, Abraham.”

Though I knew, my response in my mind to Abraham, was again knee-jerk, but then what I experienced on the table with my old friends…is also a reality, even an urban reality.

 Just 2 weeks later…

I was returning from Kannur to Thiruvananthapuram after a story on the gruesome drama behind political murders.

As I neared Kozhikode, I get a call from Delhi office asking me if I could get reactions from schools in Kerala on what they think about the Prime Minister’s speech on Teachers' day.

 I visited two schools in the rural outskirts. In one of the schools, I was interacting with girls and boys from 11^th and 12^th  classes. After we finished our programme, our real interaction started as they hounded me. I was there for 15 minutes listening to their questions.

 They wanted to know how did I become a journalist? What did I study? Where were my parents? Did I study in government schools or private schools? Do I travel all over Kerala for stories?

But very soon, there was a shift in the nature of their questions. Are you married? What does your husband do? Is he ok with your job? Did you know him before marriage? Do you fight because of your jobs? Does he support you? Did he ask you to quit this job before he married you? My answers were straight, in a yes or a no... sometimes a sentence of 10 words for a question.

 My heart sank. These girls were already preparing themselves. They had so much of energy oozing out of them. When one of them told me, she wanted to be like me, I knew what she meant. She wanted opportunities to live her life. She had dreams but she already had seen the challenges around her, from her own loved ones. Few of them were trying to see their future with the reality of my existence. At least with what they saw. As another one said, she wanted a husband like Abraham, it didn't take much for me to understand what that meant either.

They wanted me to sing for them as I was leaving. Most of the students there were muslims. I asked them if I could a sing a song from the bible which my parents used to sing over me.

As they said a yes, I sang over them a song of blessing, with a choked voice. A song that used to be sung over me when I was their age.

In those 15 minutes, it was more than a television story that we shared space for. We shared each others lives.