The Girl Who was Born in the Heart...

Years passed, and there were signs that there would be another member joining the family. Anticipation, childlike questions, wonder, feeling.hearing..... and one fine day a baby appeared on the scene. All was well. At least all appeared well. But it was not to be. And within two months, they were back to being a family of 3 again, immeasurably impoverished in a world where children and joy are synonymous.

Years passed, and the older child waited. And waited. Ignorant of the limitations of physiology.

And so they decided to adopt. A little girl. Except, now that the son was about 11, she needed to be at least three, so that you didnt runthe risk of suddenly having 3 adults and one child in the house within a few years. The idea was that the older fellow would get a sibling, and the little girl would get a brother.

She came in like a cheerful ray of sunshine, that flits through your rooms, as it tries to dodge, in passing, the waving trees in your garden, that appear in its path. They had not heard her speak. She would just nod and smile and at the most hum to herself. There was no apprehension, just a childlike confidence, stemming from listening to the caretakers (at the orphanage she was from), telling all, that she would be going to her Mom and Dad ; and here she was.

Turns out, that children who have had to "grow up" by themselves, without anyone talking to them as babies, playing with them, throwing them up in the air, and then catching them back with a whoop, often withdraw into themselves. You see food, clothing and shelter, are never the only requirements. She was three, and chances are she had had her share of isolation in her time. And she had dealt with it, in her own childlike way.

The day she became part of the family , was the day they heard her point to a lady on TV, (who was reading the news, whose hairstyle vaguely resembled Mom's ), and say "Mom !" in a ringing confident voice.

And she hasnt stopped talking ever since.

An active little girl, she got enthused by little things , such as bringing out her new frocks and storybooks and toys from her closets to show everyone. When she started school, she wanted a schoolbag exactly like her brother's, and doesnt matter if he was in 10th grade and needd to carry a lot of stuff.

Rules that were applicable to children in the house , she remembered to always apply them to elders. Without forgetting.

They had a room in the house where they removed footware outside . Superiors from work, visiting them to invite them for a family function were absolutely smitten with a three foot dictator, who showed them where the shoes were to be put, in a line if you please. And when her parents apologised , the guests smilingly and wondrously , preferred to look upon her as a girl who believed in rules, and made a great show of listening to her and following her..

By and by she got into sports, in particular swimming. It was incidental that she floated, incidental that she had to learn four different strokes, and even more incidental that someone was timing her. She swam because she loved to swim. You could get her to do all kinds of homework etc, under the threat of grounding the swimming. She was a bit on the darker side, and when children unwittingly teased her about being a dark sister of a fair brother, she, the eternal optimist, everything stemming from her firm belief in her unshakeable supreme (!) position in the family, turned up her nose at them, saying , maybe they themselves were green. (They probably were , green, with envy).

There came a time when studies started taking up more time. And the swimming started taking a back seat.

And one day they found out that she was not doing as well they thought in school. Maths nd Science was a problem. She rebelled against what she thought was totally pointless learning. Geometry was a bummer, they taught you things like lines cutting two parallel lines, making corresponding angles equal. How did it matter ? Did it help her cross the road, or swim the butterfly stroke? But give her a book on Oregami. At eight years ogf age, she looked at such a book, and a single perusal of folding patterns was enough to motivate her to memorise the various steps to coming up with a peacock with dancing steps, or a bird with moving wings. All this avidly practised during free time while travelling in trains during family vacations , to the utter delight of the co passengers....

Some recommended punitive discipline. After all, her brother had no problems in the same school. The teachers never let her forget that. But to her parents immense stroke of great luck, they were advised by an older teacher to have the girl evaluated for aptitudes, and shortcomings. In a house where a probable career in Science was a foregone conclusion, most of the time, a suggestion that , yes, there was a world outisde science and maths, was a new way to learn stuff.

The girl took up Open Schooling. You could choose your subjects, some vocational, but rules were rules and were to be followed strictly. You just took your own time appearing for the tests. There were NO grades in class. It was assumed that everyone was doing his or her best. The teachers were specially trained, and they counselled the children as well as some of the parents, who were still stuck in a science-and-maths-raise-your-grade straightjacket.

But something else had happened while in her old school. Some of her friends had started commenting, unable to counter her popularity as a sportsperson. Unwise comments about her origin, sowed some seeds of doubt. But the girl was so confident of her family, that she let the thoughts slip away. Teenage beckoned, and the ensuing personality transformations. Some rebellion, some anger. She would clam shut when angry about her studies. her eyes would almost send out laserbeams of anger as she endeavoured to deal with , what she considered , folks ganging up against her. Her friends, by whispering rumours, her teachers, by implying hat she was no good in the prescribed level of studies , and her parents, by looking troubled, everytime her schoolwork came up .

And one day, her father started a story around the dinner table. She was his favourite, and he was her favourite. The story about a little girl who came to the house, and did all these wonderful things, that lit up the house with a sense of childhood fun and wonder. Why did she come? She came because Mom had a problem. About having a baby. A medical reason. And she was the answer to all the prayers to God. The story continued over two days, and she looked forward to it, although her father was sure she knew what this was all about. She learnt she was the high point for the three of them, a favourite child and favourite sister of an indulgent brother. And she absorbed all these strengths. Her simple mind was devoid of any kind of analyses. She belonged here.

This was her introduction to the concept of adoption. She thought the whole idea rocked. She thought she was so special, she almost gave her brother a complex, which he pretended to have, to the hilt. It never struck her that she had biological parents. If she did, then the current situation was so great that nothing else mattered.

That year and subsequently every Christmas, she went with the family with Christmas candy and gifts for the children at the orphanage; and the caretaker ladies there were absolutely thrilled to bits about her. They had held her as a baby, and here she was;a confident young teenager, very comfortable with who she was, reassured by her place in the family, surrounded by indulgent father, mother,brother and grandparents.

Today, this little girl is half way through college. Her mother is often aghast at her choice of clothes for college, and that oft-repeated dialogue of "Mother !" with a shaking of the head, and rolling of the eyes, says it all - we are todays children, your time is the past, and yes, fashions have changed :-)

She has discovered boys. She has even discovered the uses of the cellphone vis-a-vis the landline which is within hearing distance from the kitchen. She worries about her weight, spends hours agonising about some minor eruption on the skin on her face, and her favourite peoples' list, familywise, currently has in descending order of popularity, her brother, her father,and lastly, her mother .....

Her folks were once invited for the inauguration of some new thing at the college library. The librarian is a very perceptive wonderful lady. The girl swam for her college in her first year, and got medals. So everyone knows her. Introductions , hellos and smiles, a few jokes here and there, and she stood next to her Mom and Dad , sort of itching to get away to the refreshments , but still restrained by something the Librarian lady was saying.

The librarian, turned to her Mom, then turned to her , and said, "you know, you even smile like your Mom !"

Her face lit up. She has a wonderful smile , much nicer than her Mom's. But this time the smile emerged from the heart, which sang. Her eyes crinkled, her smile couldnt get any wider, and the Librarian lady indulgently waved her away in the direction of her friends, where a pizza was in the process of being devoured.

And her mother looked on. And silently remembered something she had told her daughter whenthey talked about babies and stuff as puberty loomed on the horizon. Some children came from the womb. And some children, special ones, came from the heart....

Like someone once wrote:

Not flesh of my flesh
Nor bone of my bone,
But still miraculously
My own.
Never forget
For a single minute:
You didn't grow under my heart
But in it.