Bhaji Dalbir was a jolly man. Even when he scolded us he could not hide the twinkle in his eyes. He wore a turban and neatly rolled up his long black beard. He grew up in England and his English was impeccable. I had a headache by the time we arrived and an unsettled stomach. Bhanji Gurdev, Bhaji’s wife, handed my mom her new son and went to the kitchen to make chai. She was sure it would help my headache, and it would have, but she put alachi green cardamon seeds in it. While they talked I pondered my anxiety which was my life.

One big anxious moment. Okay, perhaps an exaggeration, but at that moment the smell of the alachi in the tea made my head pound extra hard and my stomach rebelled. I made it to the bathroom in time and later my father scolded me in the car for throwing up at someone’s house. By then my head had been trained to accept that I had committed the crime of the century.
It was a slow, insidious process. How does one boil a frog without it hopping out? Very slowly. But what does a child do when they love their parents and fear them in the same thought? I became frozen in time at the age of twelve. Everything after than was unknowable. Sadly I had a fifteen, sixteen, seventeen year old body with the emotional maturity and relational mentality of a twelve year old. And that’s why I allowed myself to be bought and paid for – for less than free.

Always a roar of water behind a dam, raging and storming to get out. The bricks of the dam was built with two types of bricks. One was love and wonder. The other was fear. What would happen if we garnered disapproval? If I could only recall. But there is too much to bear.

I’d been falling in love since I was old enough to know the feeling. And I know a lot because I remember a lot. I remember the day I was born when my world turned upside down and I suddenly felt squeezed like a rubber thing. Eventually I fell into an alien life so bright with light and held upside down. The smack on my bottom sent a shock through me. Never had I felt physical pain. And my body responded. Quite alien really. The air pierced my lungs and my body recoiled from the messages being sent through my pampered nervous system. The sound in my body, my own voice box scared me as it came alive. It was a cycle of pain that did not stop. When I was fifteen I heard of the Lamaz method of birthing in a tub of warm water. The lights dimmed. A gentle coming into the world. No searing bright lights. No smack on the bottom to start the lungs breathing. From a small womb into a big womb. Maybe my rebirths wouldn’t be half as painful. Perhaps I can change that now. Make up in my mind. Change my experience. Who says it didn’t happen if I imagined it?



Navi is a wonder child. Sweet, dreamy with an embracing gaze. Everything she looked upon was golden. When she was born everyone marveled at her spirit. She held a soft beauty that the world had not yet seen. Her eyes put a melody in the world that caused it to breathe a sigh of relief. Long enough to strike her lest the beauty caused the work to collapse into tears. And so came the pain inside her soon after her birth. It was like a monstrous eruption inside her that caused her little body to writhe. Angels stood and held her in their arms when her mother’s arms became over weary from bouncing and swaying to and fro trying to break the cycle of anguished cries. The day the angels told Navi that they were leaving she panicked and clung to them. But they were firm that she was to stay for now. And so Navi remembered that which most children forget as they get older.
For a long time the solid world was a dream or a nightmare, and the soft, warm and fluid world was reality. Over time it became the other way around. And she was fascinated. But what fascinated her most was the wind. So invisible and gentle, a breeze could cause the limbs of a tree to undulate in a slow or erotic dance. Yes, so much beauty could be a dangerous thing in this world. In their hurry to leave the angels must have forgotten to place their finger on Navi’s lips to seal her soul’s knowing. Or did they?