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Falling in love with the world's most beautiful girl

By Rohit Wadhwaney (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-06-02 11:26

Is it possible to see a face for the first time and fall in love? Even the most masculine of fathers swear they did the second they saw their newborn's face. I am not one of them.

Six-weeks old, barely 4 kg in weight, my daughter Shaayari fits vertically and horizontally on my stomach. That apart, she is a backbreaker.

My suddenly-10kg-lighter wife, after months of boredom and frustration (without parties, booze and smokes), wanted to paint the town red on a Friday night, while I baby-sat our seemingly angelic daughter.

I wanted to beg, "No, oh please no!" But I didn't. I can't. It's utterly rude and selfish, and quite chauvinistic.

Fathers can hit the bar, mothers can't? In rural India, that arrangement may actually work.

How bad could it be? Shaayari always crashes out at 9.30 pm and doesn't show any signs of life for the next four hours.

As it turned out, she wasn't sleepy that night.

Hence began my journey to enlightenment: Why do babies cry? Diaper's clean. Slide a finger in her mouth, she doesn't suck it, not hungry. Her hands and feet are warm enough, she's not cold. Yet, her tearless cries drown out Beethoven's piano.

Another question: What do babies want?

I put her in her carrycot, the one she slept in like a log on her way to Beijing, pick it up and start walking around the house. She's quiet, finally.

Put the cot down and she'll go off like an alarm. For the next three hours, I watch a movie, standing, sipping on a can of beer all the while swinging the carrycot to and fro. Right arm flexed, now the left. Bend the back, lift.

Over the course of time I also figured out, after she eventually slept off in my arms, that babies want you to hold them tight, close to your chest. They just want to feel safe.

Wife walks in. "How was it?"

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