Uncelebrated Expectations

I was born not without expectations of course. Thankfully mother hadn't read Great Expectations. Not even the title. Hence like everything moderate in her life, expected quite a healthy child and one that would know how to find his worm. Nothing more.

I took some time coming out. It wasn't deliberate. I was just lazy and very early at that I guess. I wasn't one to go in search of better things when whatever was, wasn't bad!

But rejection is one of the earliest things we learn. Before acceptance.

When the warm bag of viscous fluid threw me out, I fell fluttering and clumsy into the world. The birth.

Then came growing up. The rest of the birds of the same feather I knew, did what everybody did. Grew up. So did I.

I think it had to do with all the tragic novels that my mother heard the farmer's wife read aloud in the warm kitchen that she sat everyday while I grew inside her- cheerfulness was never my forte. I delved and splashed around in the pool of unpleasantness. Splashed would be more than fair a word to describe what I did. Waddled morosely would be more apt I guess. Walking around morosely and sighing often on tabescent, tiny shoulders was me.

Who wouldn't, who'd heard those stories of depression, dysphoria, struggle and treachery of vile humans!!

I was thinner than the scrawniest chicken in the farm. I wasn't bad looking I guess. People always gave me a second glance. Well, it might be in amusement, at the tiny little bird that walked around as if carrying the weight of the whole world, that made them. But I bet they haven’t read 'Notre dame de Paris' and heard Quasimodo's crime which was being born.

Maybe I was a humbug. But well, I wouldn't want to discuss that.

Food was never important. My mother in her unimaginative life taught me how to fend for myself even through the farmer's wife was kind enough and more so- not absent minded enough, to give us tiny waifs food. But I knew where to find food and if you'd cared to come out and look, you could have seen me pecking away dejectedly at the tiny bit of rye bread that was always available. Many a days I went about without eating.

Food repelled me often and anybody knows that a well brought up gander wouldn't throw up on his food.

And I grew so, tall and lanky- all skin and bones. My mother had other children and having taught me all she knew, moved on to cluck over her latest offspring. I never knew a father. He just wasn't talked about.



It had to be so. It couldn't have been otherwise.

I'd seen the farmer's wife look at me thoughtfully the last few days. Looking at her through suffering eyes that knew not what suffering was, I gave her a hurt and resigned look before walking away.

Yes, it had to be so. It just couldn't have been otherwise.

They came looking for me. I wasn't one to put up a fight. There never was a reason to have fought for before.

Survival. My legs automatically kicked and struggled.

Taken to the kitchen, I was placed on the stool that stood almost as high as the fat shoulders of the farmer's wife. Holding my neck, forcing open my bill and shoving a long metal pipe that reached all the way down to my soft stomach, food was forced down my throat. Choking and sputtering I threw up several times. I guess my mother failed in making a gentleman out of me as she always wanted. I wouldn't blame her though.

The hand on my neck was relentless. Food was more repulsive than ever. Shame isn't it, what one eats to survive ends up in killing some others?

Four weeks of overfeeding. Four weeks of waking up each day to wonder at the deeper meaning of life. Or even death. Or worse still afterlife, being served at a smart New York restaurant, in crystal plates, which are soft, white and warm.

The death.

I died at the beginning of the fifth week. Having understood what life, faith, integrity, honesty and everything that actually mattered was, in those 4 weeks than all the years I lived. I guess it is but natural that you move on to the next step after that.

So death it is.