Longings of a heart

“Your father knows that you need them!” Luke 12:30. Another month has gone by. I see my salary slip and wonder how we’ll pull through these 30 arduous days. How will our needs be met? In the same mood of dejection, I look at the calendar. MD entrance exam is only few months away. There is tons of material to be read and assimilated. Will I be able to get into ‘the dream of my life’ this year? What do the professors think of me? Am I good enough? I look into the mirror. I get sad about my frame. Why am I losing hair? My waistline is just bulging beyond redemption! Thoughts take me into a downward spiral of worry and anxiety.  My daughter next to me keeps playing with plastic toys that squeak on pressing their bellies. She squeezes them with all her might and the sound that follows exhilarates her. She does it again and again. Suddenly her expression changes from wonder to pathos and then to almost inconsolable sorrow. Her wail is no less pricking than a Shakespearean traged

After a busy day in neuro-anaesthesia, with drooping eyes and gas filled lungs, I reached home. I began sipping a cup of tea when our daughter began to cry. My wife had gone next door for some help and daddy was officially on the duty of babysitting. Considering that she was hungry, I offered her milk from the feeding bottle. She pushed it away. I tried to entertain her with music, rattles and lullabies. None of them worked. Her arms were wide open which meant that she wanted to be carried. In few moments, the cry turned to wailing and then to shrieking. I did not want to carry her, more out of tiresomeness and less out of my paternal duty to correct my over pampered kid. She kept on howling as if she had just suffered an injustice in a cosmic scale. I did not budge. I stood right in front of her but did not touch her. Her grandparents and aunts love was only spoiling her. And my wife not being around gave congenial conditions to correct Amitha, our eight month old child. This last