The begining

It rained the day I was born. An unexpected Libran rain. Kottayam Medical College found itself walked on by women with lifted skirts and men with their mundus hitched higher than the high it already was.

Mother must have screamed, her first and perhaps only emotion when concerning me. And I cried for I hadn’t wanted to be born.

After the many nurses touched me, cleaned me and handed me over with forced emotion to my mother’s mother. It was she who first held me. I’d fallen asleep in her arms, tired from my journey.

Taking one look at my not so pink cheeks and the lower half of my body that was wrapped snugly in a clinical white Turkish towel, she’d prayed that my father wouldn’t be too unhappy. The first born being a girl.

Father was too drunk with joy and alcohol. He couldn’t have cared less. He was a father. A product of his elaborate efforts at love making with his dark and passive wife. Perhaps he wouldn’t have to go through the act of sex with her after this. He hoped so.

Before handing me over to him, my grandmother had pinched my cheeks to make them redder. And I’d woken up to cry in protest. Through his red eyes, father held me uncomfortably and awkwardly. When placed into his hands that formed the most uncomfortable cradle ever, he looked at everyone around foolishly.

Already in a strange land, I was moved from place to place. I’d stopped crying because I was tired of crying too- yes, even then.

The last person to hold me was mother. And when she did I’d realized, she hadn’t wanted me born either. The hostility and hatred penetrated through the warm folds of the blanket and making an effort through all the fear I felt, I’d screamed; terrified.

How do I know all this?
Because I know everything. That’s the curse I am born with.