She groans as she attempts to bend low to touch my feet: the young mother is hampered and unbalanced by the full term baby that has been showing increasing signs of impatience with confinement. The time is now, and she leaves home for the hospital. My eyes moisten as memories flash by like slides. I’ve watched this ‘mum’ grow from a child to a woman. From a frail malnourished preteen into a glowing married woman at the threshold of maternity. My eyes sting too, as she struggles and waddles her way into the car, a tense young man, her husband clenching the steering wheel with clammy hands. In a few minutes they’re off the corner, and I feel lost and alone. I shut my eyes: a line flashes through my heart, again and again. 
Go as two, come back as three......

A few hours later, the mobile chimes. Yes, its over – it’s a baby girl says the voice cracked with emotion.

A little later I am at the hospital. Last minute complications have forced the attendant obstetricians to perform a caesarian section. I stand by the still groggy new mother as her bosom heaves and still sleeping face is furrowed with the strains of prolonged labor and medications. In ten minutes I am at the ICU, where, under glare of ultraviolet lamps in sterile environs lies an inert bundle of life. A three kilo neonate, wrapped in a papoose: a tiny pink face is all I can see. 
Lakshmi’s daughter!!!

I stoop low and pick up the baby and cradle it in my arms as Ravi, the exultant father, who too is seeing his own child for the first time clicks on his camera mobile. I peer a the tightly shut eyes. What does tomorrow hold for this new entrant? Hopefully, it will be a better infancy and childhood than its mother had till fate delivered her to my door as a reedy child from an impoverished family from the hills.

I look at the tiny ears and hope they get lined by a row of small studs and rings like that her mother now sports: she'd came to me with nothing more than two tiny bits of broom stick adorning her lobes. I touch the scalp hair thick and flaxen, so unlike the brown underfed crown of keratin her mummy had till she was twelve. I hope it grows into a sinuous black cataract, just like the one her mum tends to, tenderly, each day. Suddenly a small wriggle pulses through the newborn, it stirs, yawns and then opens its eyes. Two jet black lustrous orbs stare at me. The stare is long and gaze is intense. A tiny closed fist emerges from within the confines of the sheath the baby is encased in. A palm with tiny flexed fist flails. The fingers open and  grip on to my black spectacle cord that hangs down my shirt front. The digits close tight. Just two hours since she has been severed from her umbilical cord - the baby has reached for another bond.

From one connection to another, it now links up, and soon will, with more. The baby will reach out for help, succor, sustenance and support in its struggle with life ahead. Gently, I loosen the baby’s grip on the black cord. It holds tight. The effort dislodges my bifocals from its perch on my nose bridge and my glasses tumble down, the little fist still clutching the thread with all a baby’s mite. I ease the kid back into its metal cradle with the assistance of the nursing sister.

I return home and lie on my mat and delve back into the recesses of my past. Twenty five years ago, I had held another neonate and had wished it well too. It was my daughter. The very one I had helped the doctor deliver. 

This empty house will soon be filled with visitors and friends and a new voice will echo from its stark walls. Baby cries and wails will be a new sounds my hounds must get used too. Why my dogs, for that matter, it is me too. Its been long, really long since I’ve seen a newborn. I pat Chin Chin’s head as it lays its face on my lap. She knows, she has delivered six happy pups four years ago: today six homes are happier places, thanks to Chin Chin’s progeny lighting up lives with yips and tails. Sleep takes over me. 14^th May. What a day!!

P.S.: A few hours before I got the call from the hospital, I received a mail from USA. A natty postal envelope from California, USA. I see a handwritten note for me inside, along with a page crowded with Kannada words – a note to Lakshmi, wishing her well and happy tidings and good luck with her foray into motherhood. Sliding out from between the two pages is a check. A gift for the expected new arrival from someone who hasn't met me or Lakshmi. A person I’ve never seen. A blogger from sulekha.

This morning, 16^th May, I passed on the check and note to Lakshmi: I watch her as she reads the script. I feel proud I’ve taught her to read and write. This is the very first letter she’s ever received in her life. Her eyes well up and she clutches the mail close to her face to cover her tears. 

Thanks friend. For bridging the oceans and chasms, to reach out and say I am here. Your gesture means a lot to me: and on behalf of the new addition to the home census and its mother, thanks again.