The world of Diya

After lying stunned for a few moments, trying to recover from the trauma of birth, she lifted her wobbly head, opened her eyes and examined her mother’s face. Then her head plonked back onto the bedclothes, unable to hold its own against the newly-experienced force of gravity despite her irrepressible curiosity. Yet she was not one to give up easily. She had to take account of those around her. For some of them were going to be her family for life.

Diya, as she came to be called, is a tiny spark of life striving to express itself. She is a bundle with its own specific character traits that is not going to let itself be known as a mere product of environment and conditioning. She responds to situations in her own unique way, as a specific, independent personality. She is certainly not a tabula rasa waiting to be inscribed upon by the world.

The bright, sparkling eyes look upon me with a sagacious condescension when I make nonsensical baby-talk. She does not reprimand me, for she knows I’m her grandmother, after all. Yet, she lets me know that it is not necessary to make childish sounds to get her attention. That she can respond to mature, coherent talk. She sometimes decides to drown me in a purling fountain of laughter, transporting me into a realm other than the mundane, humdrum one of daily existence.

Diya knows that she has the right to command the attention of all who come within her ken. Even though she cannot articulate sounds into words, she is like an empress who can get her every desire fulfilled. She does not like to be held in a horizontal position like a baby. She likes to have a commanding eye out on all that happens around her.

Her most satisfied moments are when she has had an ample dose of the nurturing fluid she lives on. Then, she is stretched out flat on her back. Her father calls it her `beached whale’ posture. I think that is unkind. She is only expressing her satisfaction at being served well by the minions that she has been blessed with by nature. She is at peace with the world, and has no hesitation about letting it be known.

Diya brings out varying, hitherto unrecognised traits in the people who surround her. Her mother has been transformed from a carefree young girl into a most patient, tender woman whose ear is ever alert to the tiniest sound from Diya. Her father, too, becomes an icon of patience and protectiveness when Diya is around. It is as though she has been prescribed, by some divine ordination, the role of bringing out the best and the loveliest that lies hidden in their hearts. All those who come in contact with her aura drop their business and fall to cooing, as though they were made solely of honey and sugar and love.

I, on my part, look forward to seeing this little elf with a mind of her own grow up and transform the world around her.