Thought 1

When I was born, my mother tells me, I did not cry. For a moment people had thought that I was still born. So they sprayed some air near my nose and I got distracted. Well, for that moment I cried, taking in my first breath of stale air, putrid air, filled with the stench of the placenta my mother had just spewed from her innards and the hospital smell. I need to clarify why I did not breathe in that first moment. I had spent eight months and seventeen days inside my mother. I hadn't anything to do, so I used to think a lot. And when I got bored of thinking, I tried to entertain myself by trying to figure out what was going on outside by the muffled sounds I was hearing. With no worldly experience gathered, it was very hard to decipher the sounds, but the interpretations I came up with were hilarious. Like one day I heard a series of sounds, periodic in nature, four or five times in repetition, pause, and then again, then a woosh, and then an "Owwww!" Before the last sound I was getting a little hungry. But then I felt hurt and sad.

So, anyways. The moment I came out, and I was not breathing. I was thinking about that day, that particular series of sounds I had heard. I was waiting to be born so that I could explain to myself what had happened. Why those sounds had me feel so sad, so hurt. I had not felt so strongly about emotions up till then. In the womb, it gets rather lonely and quiet, with nothing to do. So when I was coming out, I was concentrating on those sounds, my mission, to find out what those sounds meant. To decipher the mystery of the saddening sounds. It was all I could think of. One can liken it to the moment of time when one has to step into the stage infront of a thousand people, and just before that moment one goes through his lines so as not to forget in the final moment. I was determined to do my job well. I believed that that was my purpose of life. And I was born going over my "lines" so as not to forget.

Some years later, when I was growing up, I was sitting with my mother while she was cooking. This was the time when I had completely forgotten about my life's sole mission. All those years, I was about one and a half years old, I had enjoyed life, with no care, only fun. I was oblivious to the world outside the walls of my house and garden. So here I was sitting with my mother while she was cooking, with me irritating her and giving her hell. In those moments, my mind drifted into a far forgotten time, when I heard the sounds, "Tssssh Tsssssh Tsssssh... ... ... Tsssssh Tssssh Tssssh", unmuffled, clear and resounding and resonating inside my head, reminding me of abstract things which I could not relate to. My mother was frying some fish, and as she tossed some more pieces of raw fish into the hot boiling oil, a spray of boiling oil fell on her skin and mine. I remember my mother cursing over my searing pain. While I was wailing silently, my mother was busy covering the pot with a lid. Then i realized that my life's mission was over. I still feel sad when my mother fries fish.