REMEMBERING MY EARLY YEARS: 1

          I remember, I remember

          How my childhood fleeted by—

          The mirth of its December,

          The warmth of its July.                                        –   M. Praed

ENTRY INTO THE WORLD

I have been told, and I don’t have any reason to disbelieve,  that I made my way into this world very early on the morning of Saturday, May 28, 1932, in a small apartment in Bow Bazar Street in the great city of Calcutta (now called Kolkata), India. The name of the street has been changed to Bepin Behary Ganguli Street, a patriot who fought for Indian’s political independence from the British.

The midwife who assisted my mother in this (for me) important event was a heavy-set Bengali woman who always wore a white sari, often chewed betel leaves, and could not speak in a low voice. I came to know her because she came home three times after my birth to assist my mother in the delivery of my three younger brothers.

Whenever I have visited the maternity ward of a hospital I have wondered why one needed physicians and paraphernalia for something as natural and ancient as human birth. Human beings are the only species seeking assistance in this matter.

More seriously, I also reflect on the utterly unforeseeable course of life that is awaiting a new-born, for no one can foretell what joys and sorrows, what successes and failures, what events and episodes await the infant in the years ahead.

Chaos Theory reveals the unpredictability in the evolution of physical systems when triggered by the slightest provocations. An oft-repeated metaphor is that the flapping of the wings of a butterfly in Brazil could eventually result in a hurricane in Havana or wherever. But this principle in the lives of human beings should be obvious to anyone who reflects on the role of chance factors in people’s lives. The following pages will illustrate this truth in my particular case.

Appa (as I will refer to my father from here on) once told me that the only remarkable thing about my arrival was my uncommon reaction to terrestrial atmosphere, or perhaps, to mundane delights. Unlike most babies who scream at the first inhalation, I am reported to have giggled. Amma (my mother) and the good lady in attendance were at first amused. But when this persisted, they decided to spank me on the derrière with more force than affection: a gesture which I am said to have protested  vehemently, much to their satisfaction; for loud screaming by a newborn is essential for activating its lungs. Religiously inclined thinkers maintain that the baby’s cry is provoked by an early recognition of earthly woes. Contrary to the wisdom of some sages I never subscribed to the view that life is to be looked down upon simply because pain and suffering are invariably associated with it.

Appa used to say that my infantile giggle was the first indication that I would turn out to be an incorrigible optimist all through my life. It is of course true that for most of my life I have been an optimist. But I must admit that in in recent years, like the impact of the spanking I received soon after my birth, I have tempered my decades-long optimism in the face of world politics and politicians, the resurgence of religious bigotry and nationalism.

In any event, I am more inclined to attribute my first giggles to unusual wind-effects in my internal organs rather than as a foreboding of attitudes to be developed, skeptical as I am of omens and prophesies. But Appa used to argue that the unusual wind effects were brought into play precisely to indicate my later attitudes.