My friend Pinky “Aasman Se Giri, Khajur Pe Atki”

I await the results of my Triple Marker Test. A test that will supposedly warn us against birth defects, if any, of our little yet to be born baby. While I wait in my car for my driver to return with the test results my mind races through memories of all the underprivileged children I have come across. I am yet not sure if they should be addressed as underprivileged so I prefer to call them special, in many a sense I guess they are special!

I think about Dilip Kaka and his wife. They have a mentally challenged teenaged boy and a girl. Both husband and wife took good care of their kids, yet maintaining a healthy environment in their house. A rare feet I would say, their relationship was far more mature and cordial than most normal couples I have met. He would rarely fail to mention the lack of proper testing at the time they had decided to extend their brood. I recently heard Kaka was no more...I wondered how the frail lady must be managing her household. She was regular with her religious practices and had strong belief in God, I guess that'll take her through.

I shift from memories of such children in the park to others I had met during my brief encounter with social work, psychology classes etc etc... to PINKI! Yes my dear friend PINKI.... Now this is someone my mind wanted to pay more attention to....

I had met Pinky when I was in standard Nine. I was new to the school and she was one of the first friends I had made. A very kind, pretty & wide eyed Mangalorian true Aryan blood types, at least that's what her grandparents believed! As all south Indians are supposed to be, she was extremely intelligent and came from a highly intellectual family. Father was a senior professor at an esteemed University and mother was also a lecturer. Apart from being highly educated, they were highly unconventional. A classic example of how a bunch of totally dysfunctional beings could live together and yet be happy.

Her little blue eyed sister had been in love ever since I've known her. As a child she was in love with our best friends boyfriend. Correct...in love with the boyfriend of her sisters friend!! She spend in-numerous years praying to his pictures and hoping that one day he would leave the girl and come to her chubby arms. Leave the girl he did, but never came to her. Her first heart break. After many such heartbreaks she fell in love with a woman who was already in a steady relationship with another woman. Yes, yes you are reading right...pls. continue...There we go...again she was the third one i.e. the mistress! Currently she is still seeking love -  gender, caste, qualification NO BAR...anyone interested pls apply....

Coming back to Pinky, her love life was no less of a disaster...correction...catastrophe. After her wild experiments with the birds and the bees, she fell in love with her first cousin! So much in love she was that she decided not to pursue her studies. She was intelligent and had the right contacts, both resources she decided against using. After much resistance the match was accepted as the cousin was paternal.

No, no they were never happily married.....to top it up she delivered a child.....a special child. A strikingly handsome boy....soon the family discovered the challanges. God functions in strange ways....he hurts the best people he makes. This kindest girl had probably never said a mean word to anybody, well except her parents...and this is what she gets!! As any other predictable man, our man in question simply washed his hands of the mother and child duo...citing “hindrance in my progress” as a reason. Well she took the challenge up herself and decided to do everything possible to bring normalcy in her son's life, including moving to a bigger city for better treatment.


This is not where it ends....Till now I have only narrated how she fell from the sky....the next part is how she got stuck on a tree.....


Yes...my dear friends...she fell in love again. This time around with a boy some 20 years her junior, still in college..still struggling to make ends meet....well that does not take away the license to mate!!!! She was pregnant again!! Much after complete resistance from the entire living family & society she knows, they got married. OK now here's the list of people she has to look after...her challenged son, her still at college husband, her heart-broken sister, her perpetually angry mother, her reformist dad...and the latest addition... her recently born sweet little sugar. Good God!...nothing else to add here!!

As her profession she does past life regression to cure people of their “ailments”. In one such seminar that she herself attended, she was told that in her last life she was an "Egyptian princess", married to a "cruel ruler" i.e. the husband she divorced, who had killed "her lover" i.e. the man/boy she is with now.....
Boy I truly wonder how she's going to climb down this tree???? Any suggestions??


OK...got to go...my driver is back!!