March 28 is the birthday of my daughter, Aiswarya. At about 8 am on March 28, 14 years ago, the nurse placed my infant daughter into my hands. Opening her eyes widely, she looked into my eyes and smiled—the smile that always reminds me of Prospero’s words to his daughter Miranda in The Tempest: “O a cherubin/ Thou wast that did preserve me.
Thou didst smile,/ Infused with a fortitude from heaven.” Watching a child growing up leads to some of the happiest moments in a parent’s life. The first word the child speaks, the child’s crawling, then the effort to walk, everything gets etched in the mind of the parents. The most blessed period of a human being is the period of the infancy of his/her child. I always wish to go back to the time when my daughter was a toddler. Ammu is my daughter’s pet name and, until she was five years old, she never used the relative pronoun ‘I’ to refer to herself. She used to say: “Dad, Ammu wants this, Ammu doesn’t like this, Ammu will do it...” Gradually, she replaced Ammu with I.
Often, I wish to hear her referring to herself as Ammu, but she never does. Parents want their child to always be young, but unfortunately, that is not possible. I used to accompany her to school until she was in Class 3. Dropping her off at school, I would go to the office and in the evening, she would be waiting for me in front of her classroom anxiously looking towards the gate. While walking back home, she would tell me about everything that happened in the school that day in detail, clinging on to my hands. Today is her birthday. But my child and I are locked down in different places.
The deadly novel coronavirus is spreading havoc around the world. A man afflicted with Covid from Dubai, who reached a place adjacent to mine, is said to have broken the quarantine and gone around the area before being tested positive. It means the virus could have entered the place where I live. I am happy my daughter is in a safer place. A birthday invokes sweet memories, but this ‘lockdown’ one will always be remembered.
SUKUMARAN C V Email: lscvsuku@gmail.com