My friend D just had a caesarean. She was supposed to be operated on around late February, but due to complications (which involved a sudden and sharp decrease in the amniotic fluid, triggering breathing trouble in the baby), the entire process of delivery was precipitated much earlier than it would have been otherwise. Her hubby, B, a close friend of ours, called us the day before the procedure took place to inform us about this unexpected development. So, one the next day, we reached the Bhagirathi Neotia nursing home (supposedly the best in maternity and child care right now in Kolkata) and narrowly missed seeing our friend being wheeled into the OT. There was a period of anxiety, excitement and feverish anticipation as I waited downstairs in the lobby in the company of both sets of parents, D's elder brother (who insists on addressing me as a senior each time we meet for reasons best known to him), B's maternal aunt and uncle and a colleague of B. I proved to be an unexpected moderator for the smalltalk that was evidently a strained effort to conceal the concern underlying the apparent composure on everyone's faces. K informed me later that he and his friend were extremely jittery as they sat upstairs, just outside the OT, wondering whether the operation would go off uneventfully or...
Fortunately, everything turned out fine. Debarati gave birth to a bonnie (if slightly premature) boy of 2.7 kg weight at around 11.45 am on Sat, 6th Feb 2010. Everyone immediately embarked on frantic efforts to trace similarities between the facial features of the parents and that of the newborn, much to our mirth. The only assertion that one could possibly and justifiably make at that point of time was that Baby Banerjee sported a fine growth of hair already on his baby head. The proud mama (maternal uncle) insisted on treating us each to Rs 8 worth of gooey, high-cal gulab jamun at the T-Junction stall within the premises of the clinic. We went home, a happy couple, calling up friends and relatives on the way to give them this good news and assuring them that we'd provide concrete follow-ups on the former by way of photos on orkut or via email.
The entire incident succeeded in creating one serious point of contention between K and me : if I insisted on being Mashi (maternal aunt) to the baby and K insisted on being Kaku (paternal uncle); how exactly would bystanders interpret our own relationship ?
4 comments:
I would love Baby B to call me kaku and you mashi ... lets brew a scandal !! :-)))
and how sweetly you document this! i wish i had friends and relatives who had the love for the written word and wrote similarly of my little pink buddle and me :). and only mashis can be as sweet :)). i think your k thinks 'kaku' sounds cooler than 'meso'. btw, i call almost about every couple friend of my parents that way- mashi and kaku :D :D.
First time on your blog , quite a touching post, went through some of the poetry,liked it as well.
Nice post with a conundrum at the end.
Best,
Amit
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