Time Travellers
Love, Fear and the Time Machine
Nine months ago Gaya and I became parents. Sometime in the next week or so we will welcome our child into this world. While Gaya has been busy making a human inside her, I have been puzzling about what it means to be a parent, and how will we navigate this change. Somehow there is an acute acknowledgement and a halting appreciation of the precious time we have alone together before chaos inevitably descends upon us.
Gaya is living the pregnancy every minute, whereas I get reminded of this truth every few hours. Every realisation about impending parenthood feels different, especially in the weeks leading up to the birth.
Love - for my wife and her incredible strength to go through such an utter and complete change without seemingly changing.
Wonder - “I am going to be a parent”; responsible for another human at least for a few years!; so many people have already been through this; how life will change…
Fear - “what if something goes wrong?”, and then finding comfort in numbers.
Anxiety - “have we planned for everything?”, and then realising it will never be enough.
Appreciation - for everything our parents have done to raise us.
Incredulity - there is a WIP human constantly with us!
Usually it’s a mixture of all the above within a span of three minutes.
We often debated on whether we should procreate, and found ourselves feeling differently each time. Eventually we decided to let nature take its course. Having children is a personal choice — it is arguably a largely selfish one — and brooks no justification to anyone but yourself and your partner, if you have one. Difficulty in getting pregnant is a reality, it’s all around us, and it needs to be addressed with sensitivity and medical objectivity.
We have regularly spoken about our progress with close friends and family, and found comfort in their well-meaning counsel. Some have given birth recently — with them we share the promise of bringing up our kids together. A few others have gone through trying pregnancies and traumatic birth experiences. This has helped us keep realistic expectations. I greatly admire the strength and fortitude of parents who have emerged through difficult pregnancies with a smile and without losing optimism. My only wish every day since we got the “good news” has been that Gaya remains healthy and things goes smoothly.
Thankfully we had a low-key pregnancy. Gaya has tackled these months with a quiet confidence, which has in turn given me strength. Collectively we have not taken too much pressure and largely gone with The Flow.
The Flow primarily involved Living Everyday Life — hiking, biking, walking, a bit of Netflix, a lot of lazing, cleaning, working, some reading, talking, cooking, eating, sleeping, trying to stay hydrated, and watching Tenet on an IMAX screen couple of nights back.
What a fantastically shot film on a typical Nolan canvas and a thundering, immersive background score. No other filmmaker has explored the concept of memory and time to this breadth and depth. My mind truly boggles at the sheer amount of dedication and team effort that goes into making a good movie. This is why I like sitting through the end credits — watching the names flow past and marvel at their collective achievement.
Of late I often found myself reflecting deeply about my childhood. I realised that we can always find the roots of our present selves in how we were shaped in our formative years. Thus, we talked about establishing family values and how we want to raise our child. Here are a few things we agreed upon.
Give each other room and time to grow into this role.
Cross each bridge when we come to it.
Plan for certainty; plan more for flexibility.
Focus on the basics.
Do not aim for Ultimate Perfection.
Place self needs on an equal footing as the child’s, often higher.
Prioritise the child’s personhood above our parenthood.
Spirituality and ethics over religion.
Encourage sports, reading, arts, and music.
Promote two-way feedback and freedom of choice.
Indoctrinate a love for Manchester United.
Communicate.
Express love often.
Hug everyday.
Avoid “this is how we’ve always done it”; explain.
Eat meals together as much as possible.
Establish seasonal routines. For instance, Sunday dal baati. That’s how we’ve always done it in Rajasthan.
Go for picnics as often as possible.
Inculcate a love for animals and plants.
Foster trust and friendship.
Keep low expectations about consistently achieving any of the above.
Let’s face it — these promises look good and hold up only on blogs — but there’s no limit to dreaming and trying.
In a nutshell, we are excited to introduce our child to the wonders of our beautiful universe, and learn together all over again. The past few days I have often thought of parenthood as a clean slate — a chance to do something as well as I can. It fills my heart with possibility and promise.
This week’s title and subtitle feature increasing levels of laziness and unoriginality on my part. Credits for both go to the Polish progressive rock band, Riverside. Time Travellers is a beautiful track from their incredible album — Love, Fear and the Time Machine — which released on 04 September 2015. It ranks as one of my all-time favourites.
Last September I made an unforgettable day-trip from Zug in Switzerland to Nuremberg in Germany to watch them live on the Wasteland Tour. It was a six-hour train journey to Germany, and an overnight FlixBus ride back to Switzerland. Within three hours of returning to Switzerland, I was on my way to Stockholm — it was absolutely non-stop and I loved every minute of it. Oh, in fact you read briefly about the Stockholm trip two weeks ago.
Here is a snapshot from the excellent concert. It’s a bit unfair how the drummer always remains hidden, isn’t it?
I'll just tell you what I remember because memory is as close as I've gotten to building my own time machine.
― Samantha Hunt, The Invention of Everything Else
Send good wishes for the coming days, and then send this newsletter to a friend. Cheers to new beginnings!
Beautifully written! The list is great and while expectations should be low, having that list as a reminder is so imp. I can admit that I’ve lost myself in parenthood and just recently read something about not trying to compare to the old you but wholly embracing the new you and then bringing over parts of the old bit by bit because the new role is surely one that consumes you- in a great way. Fortunately parenting is taught by the child itself so it’s all about the flow like you said. Google can be helpful if it’s 3 am and you’re staring at each other and have no clue about the issue at hand ;) and pregnancy although is all about the mom, I think it’s harder for the men in the sense that they don’t go through as much of the physical and emotional change so it’s hard to bond and completely “feel” prepared but rest assured Harsh you are going to make a fantastic dad. I hope your baby gets your sensitive and caring nature and deep personality :) sending u lots and lots of love good wishes and praying for a smooth delivery
Beautifully written Harsh.Loved reading it.Good luck to both of you!