Life is beautiful

What is it that brings out the purest of emotions in you?

You guys! I’ve been running all over the place. Such chaos and beauty all around. My sister gave birth to a baby boy. This past week, I turned 29. So much is happening!

It was 2018. I was working on a project that was ultimately to be inaugurated by the prime minister of India, so there was pretty much no control over time. In our family, we never had the culture of creating a big deal of announcements, but I remember hugging my sister when I learned she was pregnant. I don’t know whether it was just my love for her, but I made sure I was visiting my sister every two weeks despite all the work. It was a big deal for someone like me who often travelled abroad and had many reasons to prioritize work. On the limited few hours I got in the name of a break over the weekend, travelling to meet my sister was never the plan, but I anyway did. I could tell things were different because every year I would buy silly gifts. That year one of the many sensible gifts I gave her was an air purifier.

The launch happened, but somehow, that was not even the year's highlight. The first time I held my nephew in my arms, the first time I saw my sister turn into a mother, the kind they talk about in books, I never forgot. And life came around when I got that opportunity the second time a few days back.

My bundle of Joy — my second nephew ❤️

Childbirth is a complex phenomenon. There is so much at stake, so many small decisions and sacrifices. There is so much that the mother goes through those nine months. I have always failed to explain what makes mothers mothers, but every time I see my sister and my baby nephew, it all makes sense. In a matter of hours, you’ve someone in your arms whom you will go to war for. Babies are such delicate creatures, yet so beautiful. Crying when they are hungry, crying when they are burpy, crying when they have to pee or poop, crying when they are disturbed and crying when they are sleepy. Babies surprisingly get angry too! Yet babies are a bundle of joy if anything.

As I was dead tired, on night duty a few hours back and hoping that the baby would sleep for just a while longer because he hadn’t let anyone sleep on his first night, I found myself wondering about what happened to me between 2018 and 2023. Where was this side of me that I’ve brought back up, lost over the years?

I have seen many babies, but when your real sibling gives birth to a baby, it hits you differently. I had found myself appreciating a baby for the first time in 2018. It was a few years later when someone asked If I could save one person on earth, who would I save? I named my nephew in a quick response, realizing that for the first time, the answer to the question had shifted from my parents to a baby I held in my hand minutes after he was born.

It is moments like these that make me humble. It is moments like these that make everything else worthwhile. It is moments like these that give me the energy. The birth of a baby, my dog jumping all over me every time I come back from my office, my mom calling me because she feels I’m not okay, my dad celebrating my smallest wins as his biggest achievements, my wife hugging me after a long day, my sister smiling, my nephew praying to the lord for protection of his one-day-old baby brother, my mom and dad staying awake the whole night guarding a creature who has been breathing this earth’s air for less than 24 hours — so much to be thankful all around. There is so much to appreciate in this world.

You may be chasing a zillion things, but pause once in a while to appreciate life for things in the long and the short term. I’m too overwhelmed with thoughts and I think it reflects in my words spread all over, but there is a lot to pour here for sure. I’ll come back!

But meanwhile, you guys, reflect on what brings out the purest of emotions in you. Life is beautiful if you look for the beauty all around :)