August 13 — A Birthday of Joy and Remembrance
AI Sketch of me and Harvinder missing our first born baby girl.
Today we celebrated Harvinder’s 71st birthday, surrounded by the love and affection of our family. Yet August 13 always brings a quiet tear to our eyes, because it is also the birthday of our first child a daughter born in 1973.
At that time, I was posted on a project in Nepal, while Harvinder was in New Delhi under the loving care of my parents and with access to some of the best doctors in AIIMS Delhi. She was under the persona care of Dr Bakshi a renowned gynecologist and head of the Department. Our daughter was born a healthy seven-and-a-half-pound baby. My mother later described her as a beautiful little doll with dark hair who looked just like Harvinder.
Sadly, she survived for less than twenty-four hours. I was away and never had the chance to see or hold my first baby daughter. The pediatrician later explained that sometimes even medical science has no answer for such happenings.
More than half a century has passed. Every August 13, while we joyfully celebrate Harvinder’s birthday, both of us quietly remember our little girl and sometimes wonder how life might have been with a daughter and a son.
Jania, Shilpy, Harvinder and baby Geet
Perhaps that is why, when grand daughters Jania and Geet later came into our family, my happiness knew no bounds. Somewhere within me, I felt that the daughter I could never hold had returned to fill our lives with the joy of daughters.
Fate has its own writing. We accept it with gratitude to Waheguru but a father’s heart never forgets the child he never had the chance to hold.
