Month: September 2022

Surrogacy.


This article explains surrogacy as “is a legal arrangement in which a woman agrees to become pregnant and bear a child for the benefit of another person who will become the kid’s parent.

I am inspired to write this post as a friend, let us call him SMV,  contacted me earlier today to share a family secret about which I was not aware.

I have his permission to write about this, as he hopes that there would be others who may benefit as he and his daughter did due to surrogacy.

His daughter, who I have known since she was a babe in arms was married when she was 21 and was unable to conceive for many years. After investigation, it was found that she had a medical condition that made it impossible to conceive in her uterus, and the couple were advised to get a child via the surrogacy route which is legal in India.

I have met the grandchild who is now a strapping young lad full of beans and good cheer and I never knew that he came into their household thanks to the surrogacy programme available in India.

So, what inspired SMV to share this information with me after all these years? He compared the surrogacy process to the Koel in my blog post Invasion, begetting its chicks via the surrogate route using the Bulbul as the surrogate mother!

Strange how one innocuous thing leads to another!

Invasion!

Among the many things that I enjoy in the mornings when I sit with my mug of tea in our veranda, the sound of the koel calling inevitable brings back memories of an old Hindi song.

Two pairs of Bulbuls have nested in our home. One in the hedge bordering our garden and one on top of a window in our kitchen. You can see the latter below.
The one below is a google image of a nest with an egg, very similar to the one in our garden hedge.
I have been witness to the shenanigans of a pair of Koels who have hijacked the nest in the garden to dump koel eggs in it as they do either in these or crow’s nests. The hapless Bulbuls keep trying to chase the koels away with little success as the latter are much bigger and simply ignore the former.

Fascinating sight of one of nature’s phenomena. I have only heard / read about koels dumping their eggs in the nests of other birds as they do not build nests of their own, and this morning ballet is simply too interesting to ignore. It takes the allure of my morning dose of news papers to drag me away.

Lottery And Regrets.

I was quietly sitting on my recliner and reading a book last evening. My DIL was lounging on the sofa and catching up with her messages on her phone.

She must have read about this lottery winner which has been doing the rounds in all our media here the last couple of days.

She suddenly asked me “What will you do if you won a lottery like the auto driver did?”

I reflected for a while and said, “I will put the money in the bank and spend some of it in sprucing up our home and leave the rest for the two of you.”

DIL – “No going to see all the grand children in the family and of friends all over the world, no vacationing in exotic places?”

I – “No dear. My travelling days are over as you well know. I have seen my share of exotic places and modern mass media enables me to be in touch with everyone all over the world. I am now in my comfort zone and am quite content.

I don’t think that she expected that answer and the chat ended there.

This little chat however reminded me of a book that I had read some time ago. While reading the book I could well relate to the dying regrets that the author writes about and even at that time I had placed myself in their position and wondered whether I would have the same regrets and had come to the conclusion that I would not.

The five regrets are:

1.”I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.”

I believe that I did.

“I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.”

I never had to work hard anyway! And I am not being facetious. Things were different during my working years.

“I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.”

While I did not, till about my late teens, I changed when I started regular salaried employment and performance linked incentives, and was able to express my feelings without being afraid of the outcome or the reaction of others.

“I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.”

I have, and continue to do so. The longest lasting friendship that I have is with my Primary-School-mate who lives now in Mumbai and many others from my high school and business school days as well as others who came into my life due to my career, travelling and blogging.

“I wish that I had let myself be happier.”

I have been very fortunate that apart from the sorrow of the death of family, friends and pets, I have not had many occasions to be unhappy. I have been and continue to be quite happy, perhaps even to the bemusement to some others.

How would you rate yourself on these five parameters dear reader?

Synchronicity 4.

It has been quite some time since I wrote about synchronicity in my life and before I could even think about it, it happened when I opened the Facebook app today a while ago.

The first image posted by a dear friend and colleague was this:
I responded in the comments column as “It happened to me as you well know.”

The background to that comment – After almost a quarter century of working with one employer, I decided to quit due to differences with the top. I quit and moved to Pune, where I have lived for the past thirty-two years and it has been the only place that I would want to stay all these years.

The next image that was posted by another friend in Facebook, was this:
Yes, the life here has had its ups and downs and it has most certainly made me stronger.

The last image that I came across that sums up everything is a post from a friend of twenty two years from the same city where I live, who too has seen a lot of ups and downs and has shared those experiences with me as, I have mine with her.