Of late Mixed Blessings has become my world. I have just finished going through Chapter-19 and found myself wavering from the pages to the pangs of reality in the years gone by. Brad, the Judge and Pilar, his wife of 19 years, are expecting the birth of the twins. Pilar has just had her tiny angel taken out of her womb to avoid further complications. Someone gives her a shot. The baby becomes woozy and half-asleep. A worried Brad is explained the causes of the stillbirth. “It is hard to say. She was very small. We think she lost a lot of blood to her brother ….”

There is a flashback of some sort as I find my mind wavering to the days when the world was truly innocent and beautiful.  The fairies were a possibility and the denizens of mother earth believed in lots of values like Love, Compassion, Sacrifice and so on. It was on one such dazzling Durga Puja day, if my memory serves me right it also happened to be The Daughter's Day, that someone I loved many moons ago, was lying in a hospital bed fighting a losing battle. She was in labour and the doctors were trying all they could to save her twins.

On the ground floor below, I was perspiring on a cold day, sitting on a lonely chair. Someone came by and sank in the chair next to mine. She did not waste much time in venting her anger on my youngest sister, the young, upset mom of the lady in labour.  You get to know the true character of the people in times of crisis, they say!

It was not long after that that I could see my bro-in-law, the father of the twenty plus mother in the labour room, coming out with the doctor with worry writ large on his face. Apprehensive I got up and sneaked near them. Most of what the doc was telling my bro, did not make much sense to me. All I could gather was that one of the twins was a stillborn. My emotional mind started playing havoc with me and all I could think of was a tiny unsung cherub on her way back to the heavenly abode, having served her purpose of life by making the greatest of sacrifice for her nine-month-companion and brother in their mother’s tummy.

“They call it twin to twin transfusion. It weakened her, and she just couldn’t breathe on her own. Underdeveloped lungs, I suspect, and too small to survive so much trauma.” the doctor in the novel is heard explaining to Brad, the shattered father. Brad looks at his wife sleeping peacefully on the bed and wonders how he is going to break the news to her.

Pilar is devastated when the truth is finally revealed to her. She sobers down gradually and wants to see her baby. The nurse brings her son, but she is all heart for her daughter. The nurse brings her in, tightly wrapped in a blanket, her tiny face so pure and sweet.

“I want to hold her …” She is placed in her arms. Pilar sits quickly as she holds her, touches  her eyes, her mouth, her cheeks, her tiny hands with her lips – kissing each tiny finger.

“I love you, I always wil. I loved you before you were born, and I love you now, sweet baby. I want to name her Grace …. Grace Elizabeth Coleman’” She sits for long just holding her baby as though to make sure that she will always remember her perhaps when they meet again one day in Heaven.

The nurse is back to take the baby away. “Good-bye, Sweet angel.” She kisses her again and feels her heart being torn from her soul with a pain she will never know again. It was a piece of her rent deep within, gone to be buried with the baby .

After what seemed like hours, we were asked to collect the body from the passage in the backyard. There was a cab waiting near the back door. Somehow I squeezed in. one of my relatives occupied the space between my bro and me. The father of the angel, dignified and shell-shocked, sat on the front seat, beside the driver.

After some 20-25 minutes or more, the cab stopped near the brightly lit gate of the crematorium at Gobra. Someone led us through the scattered graves to a newly dug square. The father, who had been holding the baby close to his heart till then, laid her down, at a signal. A container with water was handed as well for sprinkling water over the laid to rest body. Then we had to go through the same motion.

Juxtaposed to the composed figure of the father, my bro made a pathetic sight. Upset beyond words, he could not hold back his tears all the way back to the hospital.

Some memories in life are not meant to go away. They are forever, grinding you time and again to be more accommodating, understanding and god-fearing. For a life spent in criticizing others, bent on taking vengeance and thinking the world about the self, is the common lot of most of us. Only a handful of do-gooders do not hesitate to sacrifice themselves, their happiness for the happiness of others, without even bothering to have a second thought. The world salutes them while mourning over their loss as The omniscient  beckons them back to His blissful lap.