Runs deep?

It has happened many times before. It also feels like a ritual. Mother-to-be would have an ultrasound done. She would ask if the baby was okay. Once she knows everything is fine, she will pop up the next question. Is it a boy or a girl?

Talk about all the milestones that science has surpassed or the world has changed with social transformation and women's empowerment; it is pretty comical to see how the response usually is. It is by no means mutually exclusive, but it is seen in the majority.

If male genitalia is observed, the mother, the husband or the rest of the spectators, who would sometimes be her sister, mother or mother-in-law, would burst into laughter, which in my mind sounded like joy, not comedic. I even had a mother-in-law who went on to give a loud cheering clap. She must have been a cheerleader in her previous life.

Conversely, a similar atmosphere would not be observed if a girl is suspected. As if hoping for the opposite, one of the 'spectators' would blurt out that things would be more precise in future ultrasound examinations. Then another would go all philosophical to say that the gender did not matter; as long as both mother and baby were healthy, anything was alright. To me, that sounded like sour grapes.

I thought the local demographics brought these people to my attention, but a recent event changed my perception. Somehow, I landed up at a relative's baby shower celebration.

For the uninitiated, a baby shower is a public announcement of the impending arrival of the family's newest member. In the South Indian diaspora, at least, it is like a last hurrah for the mother-to-be to be feted before she is worn out with eye bags of sleepless nights and worry lines of uncertainties of baby demands. As it is usually done for first-time mothers, this is the last call to be dolled up for public display. Before this, she would have been the bride.

So, after the rituals of the elders and relatives blessing the soon-to-be mum, the highlight of the day started. A giant balloon filled with helium gas and confetti of a single colour and covered with a dark-coloured plastic bag is punctured. The confetti rushes out, denoting the newborn's gender as predicted by ultrasound. The gender had apparently been kept as a secret between the soon-to-be parents. Even the immediate family members were kept out of the loop.

When blue confetti burst out of the balloon, it would have been pink if it were a girl; everyone around me yielded a shriek of exhilaration. Some members were even seen congratulating the soon-to-be father for a job well done. The confusing thing is that the female members of the invitees were all smiles, belittling their own kind. It was not that the family did not have a shortage of boys or anything like that.

I wonder if they were excited it was a boy or if their secret prediction or betting proved correct. Even though outwardly they gave an impression that they were modern, from their sense of dressing and revealing of body contours and silhouette, did they subscribe to their idea that the firstborn must be a male? The traditional thinking is that men are born leaders, and the firstborn will ensure the continuity of the bloodlines. I wonder.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Nature prefers the young...

Broker (South Korea; 2022)
Written, Directed by Hirokazu Kore-eda

Maybe Nature has wired us that way. Whenever we see a baby, a stranger, for no reason, we start cooing and making strange noises or faces to entertain him. Put an adult in the baby's place; nobody will give it a second look. We may be wary of whether the adult would enter our safe zone. A baby, however, is no threat.

Nature knows it is not kind to the living. Violence and destruction are everyday day-to-day occurrences. Imagine being left out in the wild overnight; chances are one would be pounced on or stung by a predator. If not, mere exposure may chance hypothermia or pneumonia. Hence, Nature tries to give the offspring, the harbinger of an improved 2.0 genetic mashup, a dig at life. That is why we get emotionally attached to a miniature version of ourselves, minus all the negativities and the evil thoughts lurking within.

OK, it is OK that Nature wants to ensure the continuity of progeny, and this world is no place for the aged. But it makes procreation too enticing for its participants to resist. Nobody has the foresight to realise the wisdom they would have the morning after. Herein comes all the entanglement and maladies. Kingdoms have fallen, relationships have been ruined, and families have turned apart. Still, sex is the best-selling merchandise on the planet.

This complicated drama tells us how a baby can change one's life. The sight of a newborn makes most people go all jello. The longer we are attached to a baby, the more we are drawn together.

A young girl, So-young, leaves a newborn in the baby box of a church. Unbeknownst to all, the place of worship is under police surveillance. Within minutes of deposition, CCTV recordings are erased, and the baby is ferried away in view of selling it off in the black market.

So-young changes her mind and wants her baby back. She goes to the police when told that the church never received her baby. The baby nappers, Ha Sang-hyeon and his sidekick, Dong-soo, decide to abduct So-young too. All three go on a road trip trying to sell the baby to the highest bidder. 

The time spent on the road bonded them and revealed each other's backgrounds. So-young is a sex worker who had killed her partner after a tiff about not terminating her pregnancy and was on the run. Sang-hyeon and Dang-soo are disgruntled orphans who believe the whole adoption system is a waste of time and have no qualms about a bit of making money out of the unwanted babies.

In the meantime, the widow of the murdered partner has sent some thugs to lay her claim on the baby. The police also try to trap the kidnappers by setting up fake potential buyers. Meanwhile, a couple who recently had a stillbirth desperately seek to adopt a baby.

Is it not ironic that something unwanted suddenly becomes so much sort after?

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Blame it on the rain, baby...

How often we hear of individuals who squarely blame their maladies and under achievements to their upbringing and specifically their parents? We hear of their lack of confidence to an overbearing mother who is always just around the corner to cushion his next fall. His inability to concentrate is because the parents failed to provide a memorable childhood. They cannot sustain a relationship because their parents had marital issues. They cannot keep time because the parents were deep sleepers. Honesty is an alien word because the father cheated on the mother. He lacks self-discipline because his father was a rolling stone. You have a reason for all the unfavourable traits that you possess, everybody else except the man in the mirror whom you do not wish to blame. 

Could your parents be such worthless creatures that the forces of nature decided to go through the sieve of natural selection and survive the swim of the survival race of the fittest? Would they not be purged out of the system as quality controls often do to aberrations of deformed proteins.  There sure must be some redeeming factors in them that you fail to recognise. Plough harder. You may indeed find the gem that your progeny discovered in each other. Perhaps the comfort you are in blinds you to the amenities that are around you - that you take as your birthright. Remember, nobody or nothing owes you a living. Every living day is just a piece of alms strewn at your face by the Benefactor of the Universe. 

Everything justifiable?

Gone Baby Gone (2007)

Nature has created our offsprings to appear cute and lovable. It is nature’s way of ensuring that the adults innately protect them, and these weak ones too have a chance to mature to adult. Left to the elements, they would easily perish. So when a four-year-old little girl goes missing, the media and the general public goes into a frenzy. She is from the poorer side of Boston, born to a mother of a drug addict who spends more time in a daze and the company of men of questionable character than nurturing her child.

In the midst of this, a private investigator and his partner (Patrick and Angie) are hired to help. With the assistance of the police chief and his men, they unveil a twisted plot of the child’s mother and her lover involved in a world of illicit drugs, money, ransom and the picture of a neglected child in the midst of all these.

The tale only gets darker. The police officers involved in the rescue mission are also no angels. They take justice into the own hands and justify their actions by believing that what they are doing is to right the wrong, ensuring the right person is punished.

The clincher is when we are informed that the police together with the uncle staged the whole kidnapping of the girl and orchestrated its foiled rescue attempt with the private investigators as a privy to all. They wanted to save the child from an obviously self-defeating environment to give her a chance in life. The debate at the end of the film is whether the best place for a child is with her mother, despite her shortcomings or she should be uprooted from an apparently decadent environment to ensure a brighter future.

There is plenty of references to illustrate that the rules, made from the theological viewpoint are certainly not so straight forward. Like for instance, the doctrine of ‘Thou shall not kill’ does not apply when you are the law enforcer, and you are up against a system so convoluted that justice may be denied, and the criminal is so treacherous, killing seems to be the only human thing to do. Or is it? Are we qualified to play God? About separating the mother and kids, they feel that children are mouldable like a clean sheet of paper, they adapt. They are so gullible that they ‘turn the other' cheek all in the name of love!

At the end of it all, we are left in a quandary. We are all like occupants of a boat which is inevitably heading to crash. All of us, despite not having a single clue on how to manoeuvre the vessel, try our hands at it with gut feeling and common sense as our guide to steer the vessel!

Then it becomes ugly!

The first question that people ask when they see the cute insert of my baby picture at the corner of the cover of my book is, "Oh, you look so cute as a baby." And the standard reply is "and we all grow ugly after that!"

We all see pictures of little children and videos of baby birthdays and such, we never fail to appreciate how cute our offsprings are and perhaps see how well or badly they have turned out eventually.

Babies are made small, helpless, cute and cuddly for a particular reason - survival! A small, visually pleasing object has a better chance of being protected in times of adversity than an ugly repulsive one!

That rule probably does not apply to his flesh and blood. For his mother, the maternal instinct would guarantee his safety no matter what - she would run into a burning building or jump into a lake even if she knows next to nothing about staying afloat. Like Amma used to say, "To a crow, her chick is still a golden chick."
P.S. The collective noun for crows is murder!