The blessing we take for granted

After joining government service as a helicopter pilot, things were quite difficult in the beginning. My wife came to Chandigarh from Jalandhar to supervise the shifting and selecting a suitable domestic help as I was destined to be a forced bachelor.

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Finally, she found the right match of a young husband-wife duo who would come in the evening for cooking and cleaning up. As my timings at work were irregular, it seemed a perfect arrangement.

Everything went well for a few weeks, but then they started skipping duty on one pretext or the other, forcing me to order heavy greasy food from a nearby hotel. I landed back in Chandigarh after a hard day, flying political masters throughout Punjab, and rang up Ajay, the husband, to say that I was on my way home. He replied as usual that his wife was not well. I simply lost it and ordered him to be at my place by 8 pm.

As I stepped out of the lift, both he and his wife were sitting on the stairs. I stopped my opening verbal tirade midway when I saw them both puffy-eyed and serious. ‘Come inside,’ I unlocked the door and asked them what had happened.

The woman started sobbing, while he narrated that she was three months pregnant with complications of foetal development. She was going for the termination of pregnancy the next day. I genuinely felt sorry; they were standing in the drawing room, and behind them hung a huge picture of my teenaged children hugging my late father. My gaze was fixed on the photograph while he continued, ‘Sir, this is the second time it has happened. I have told her now that we will go in for adoption if the Almighty’s gift is not destined for us.’

It suddenly dawned on me how precious and beautiful children are. People who are blessed with them tend to barely relish it all, but the love for one’s offspring is genetically embedded in every being.

Now that my children are happily settled in their own callings in life, the years spent performing the onerous task of bringing them up run like a movie flashback. My only regret is that I should not have buried my head in their school report cards and judged them by their marks and grades alone. No report card even remotely suggested what affectionate and mature individuals they would turn out to be. I wish that while they were with us, I should have hugged them tighter and laughed louder.