HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY DARLING DAUGHTER!

There was a mini earthquake on August 30th 1984 as my dear daughter Rashi was born and she has kept us rocking ever since!! She made her presence known even before she was born. I suffered from high blood pressure in the last month before Vivek was born but with Rashi my blood pressure went high from the third month onwards so I was not allowed to eat any salt from then. I also had to be admitted to the hospital three times prior to my delivery so I had a really eventful pregnancy. Rashi is always in a rush to do things and this was also the case when she was born. She came 3 weeks early and weighed  the whole of four pounds. Fortunately she didn’t have to go into the incubator but she was the only baby in the nursery who wore a little woollen hat… a fact which pleased Vivek no end! The first couple of days she always came to my room tightly swaddled so I never realised just how tiny she was and one day I went to the nursery when she was given a bath and I saw her scrawny thin legs and arms. That was when my mother in law decided we needed to keep a trained sister at home along with the jaapa ki ayah. I remember the first night she came home. She kept on making very strange sounds and the three of us would switch on the light to check that she was doing okay. This happened a few times and we were so scared we just kept on the light and the three of us just sat and watched her all night! When Vinay came to my room first thing in the morning I was so overwhelmed

I just burst into tears as I didn’t think I would be able to look after her. He immediately picked her up, which was a huge thing for him because he never picked up any baby till they were at least 6 months old and he danced around the room with her in his arms. That gave me the confidence that I could manage and we carefully nurtured her till she slowly gained weight. Vinay’s secretary had one of those old style kitchen scales which have like a pan on top and we used to weigh her every week to make sure she was growing. Since I had not had salt for 6 months I found all my food to be very salty and couldn’t eat it and my mother couldn’t understand why the cook was adding extra salt. In the end she tried it and found it to be okay and we realised that there was nothing wrong with the food… it was just my taste buds!!!

Feeding Rashi was always a great chore. It would invariably take at least an hour for each meal. I would give her one bite and she would tuck it in one side of her face. I would poke her cheek so it would go to the other side… and this continued ad infinitum. As she grew older she would always strategically sit next to Vinay so he would feel sorry for her and secretly eat half of the food on her plate!! Fathers love to spoil their daughters and we mothers are left to be the villains!!

When Rashi finished her class 10 board exams the two of us went on a mother daughter trip to Venice and Rome. We reached Venice and despite it pouring with rain went to St Marks Square to feed the pigeons and wandered around a bit. Then we thought we’d go back to the hotel, rest a bit and then go out for dinner. We were both jet lagged so passed out and I woke up a few hours later and Rashi was fast asleep so I just ate some crisps and fell back to sleep. She must have woken up a bit later, found me asleep so also just ate some crisps and biscuits and went to sleep. So this happened all night and we both finally woke up at about 6 am ravenously hungry and just waited for breakfast to be served and I think we were literally the first to attack the food. We had a lovely trip and I took her to every museum and gallery in Venice and Rome and after two days in Rome she refused to even enter a museum and decided we were done with the sightseeing and should now hit the shops. Sounded like a good idea to me!!!

Rashi for some reason was always an extremely unlucky traveller… so much so that if people knew she was on a particular flight they would change their tickets. Her flights were aways late or diverted or cancelled. Once she was going on the British Airways flight to London and I dropped her at the airport and was having a nap only to find a missed call from her. I rang her and she said her flight was diverted and when I asked her where she was she had no idea and after asking the people sitting near her found out she was in Riga!! Another time when she was studying in Cheltenham she used to get the coach straight to Heathrow Airport. Can you imagine her luck…the  baggage hold somehow opened and only her suitcase fell out of the coach on some country lane!!!Another time when she was at university and moving into her hall of residence she very cleverly left her handbag containing her passport and money in the car which was unlocked whilst she unloaded all her suitcases and cartons etc. Someone walking past the car must have thought it was an early Christmas … they of course swiped the bag and the next thing we know is my dear daughter is crying over the phone that she has lost everything!!! We were by now used to all these mishaps so in fact we used to get worried when we didn’t get any frantic calls from her. 

Okay I think I have given you enough background stories and I shall save the rest for my next post. That is if Rashi doesn’t kill me first… for revealing all these little unknown facts of hers!!!