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Audio Theme : The Horizon of Saudade  | from Dil Bechara |

https://youtu.be/UWiZJej2_LQ

Total word count - 2548

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10 | The Tigress And Her Cub

"What's the temperature?" Cozily wrapping the quilt around the boy's squishy body, Hinduja hugged him to her sternum, distinctly feeling the heat emanating from his tiny frame even through the thickness of the quilt.

"101." Mahadevan mouthed while closing the cap of the digital thermometer.

Anxiety rushed through her veins even before she knew it. "I am calling Vijay bhai or better than that, let's take him to Apollo now. Trauma Center toh khula hi hoga na abhi bhi?" Saying so, she leaned back to fetch her phone from the side table kept next to the four-poster bed, her off-white Cashmere shawl fluttering along with her careful manoeuvres in an effort to not awaken the sleeping toddler in her dainty arms.

"No, don't." He raised his extended palm as a sign to stop her. "It's practically ten pm in the night now, Inu. Vijaypath bhai lives around two hours away from here, I don't think it's feasible to call him here at this hour. And we don't need to rush anywhere, I'll call Anirudh's pediatric physician from Medwin Hospital, okay?" He breathed into her ears, cupping her cheek.

"Fine, call him asap." She paused, trying to stabilize her perturbed breathing. "Normally, kids within the age range of three months to three years with a temperature higher than 102.2°F should be immediately taken to a doctor. He is already down with 101°F, so the sooner the doctor arrives, the better."

"Okay, I'll call him right away." Saying so, he got up from the bed fetching his phone from above the wireless charger, "And, Inu?" He about-faced a bit.

"Ji?" She looked up at him, her Stygian eyes turning a degree glossier every passing second.

"Calm down, I have never seen you become so panic-stricken before. Drop that! I have never seen my wife panic at all. Trust me, it is typical for children to feel under the weather at times. Everything will be fine, okay?" He assured her in a gentle tone.

She nodded her head, striving hard to stop the itching in her eyes.

He walked out of the bedroom to call the doctor.

Forty-five minutes later, Doctor Mohnish Pradhan trudged into the opulent penthouse suite of the Leela Sky Villas belonging to the monarch of the Dogra Corporation, bone-tired after an entire day of grinding away at the pediatric OPD.

***

Hinduja stepped into the bedroom, balancing a tray containing a cup of steaming hot tea in her hands.

Placing it on the side table attached to the bed, she stood in the vicinity of her husband, her hands trembling in fear. "Is he fine?" She heard him questioning the doctor.

"Other than the increased body temperature, overall, the child is doing fine, Dogra Sahib." Tugging the binaural from both sides in different directions, the fifty-year-old doctor plugged out the earpieces of the stethoscope from his ear holes. "I guess it's due to the change of weather - it rained last night na. I deduce he has caught the fever due to that. But, since the temperature is already above 100, I think it's best to administer an acetaminophen shot at the earliest."

"Injection?" A tremulous whisper left her mouth, "But, he is so small." If not for the outright stillness in the room scarce of any auditory intervention, one could have barely heard her voice.

Dr. Pradhan's lips curled up faintly. "I understand your sentiments as a mother, Mrs. Dogra, but a shot at the present moment is a requisite."

Her dark eyes met Mahadevan's malty ones, as if conjointly coming to a common decision.

"Alright."

"Okay."

Both the husband and the wife responded together.

With a single nod of his head, the doctor proceeded to prepare the shot.

Fifteen minutes later, the doctor was done with administering the injection. Hinduja was sitting on the bed with a now awake Anirudh in her arms, looking at her with wide eyes, his two upper incisors on display like that of a baby Hamster. The tiny fellow looked anything but a wimpy little kid with a high fever.

The long tally of tasks that he had accomplished since the time he woke up was:

1. Yanking the doctor's salt and pepper beard

2. Harshly pulling and uprooting the scarce white remains of whatever little hair the doctor had on his nearly bald head

3. Sticking his tongue out and making faces at the doctor

4. Giving him a flying kick on his left butt when he had turned around to fetch the cotton swabs from his bag

5. And finally, plucking a few white strands of his moustache and catapulting them back into the doctor's open mouth when the poor man was administering the injection in his outer thigh

A few yelps and shrieks later, the doctor handed over the prescription and a few medicines for the night to Mahadevan. Let's just say the poor old pediatrician wasn't exactly pleased while walking out of the Dogra household, especially after the slick, lopsided smile that two-year-old hellion of a kid flashed at him inside.

That brat!

The tea made for the medical practitioner was long forgotten by both the parties on the side table.

The child's mother, on the other hand, was still trying to figure out her offspring's genetic makeup. Hinduja kept racking her brain about the same question: Whom did her son take after?

His father?

But her husband and the term 'naughty' don't go well with each other, do they?

Perhaps, Shivalika?

Could be, who knows?! She never really knew that lady in real life, anyhow.

She had almost squeezed her eyes shut, her lithe frame shuddering at the idea of her little child being in pain and sobbing, mentally ready to calm his painful mewl anytime then. The boy on the contrary, well, let alone shed tears or scream as she had feared he would, that zestful little rascal of hers, albeit he initially appeared a little uneasy, whimpering just for a second or two, but then kept gazing at her, snuggling into her stomach while the doctor was inserting the needle into his thigh.

He didn't wail at all. In lieu of that, he almost made the clinician cry his guts out.

She sighed.

Placing the fast-asleep delinquent toddler back on the bed, she felt his forehead with the back of her hand. The temperature appeared normal.

Out of the blue, she sensed two large, calloused hands holding her waist from behind, heaving her up from her initial spot and propelling her closer to an even bigger chest. Within seconds, she found herself locked up in her spouse's arms, in his embrace, her back in intimate contact with the anterior side of his torso.

His deep breaths tickled the shells of her ears. Her heart palpitated as her body quivered, turning multiple shades of scarlet.

"I know he is ill, and he requires your attention, but I think he is feeling much better now. The injection worked well." Unclasping the banana clip from her hair, he let her raven locks free. "Naturally, he has always been a tough-willed yet dramatic kid, always unfazed during the occasional doctor visits yet wailing and keeping an entire army of doctors and nurses on their toes during his vaccination shots."

Pushing her thick mane on the right side of her shoulder, he laid his head in the hollow at the base of her neck. "But today I saw something divergent from his typical ways—he didn't cry. Thanks to you, our champ didn't cry. I----I don't like it when he cries, I abhor it. Every time I saw his tear-soaked glistening red cheeks while sitting on my lap in that hospital room, gazing longingly at the mothers of the other children present there, I used to feel helpless. I used to see myself failing pathetically as a father." Mahadevan's voice quaked. "My kid has finally found the assurance he had been unwittingly searching for all along—the solace of being in his mother's arms—in your arms, something I could never provide him with. Thank you so much, Inu. Sometimes, I find myself feeling short of words while expressing my gratitude towards you. You really are the broad daylight in our desolate dark lives."

"And what if I say I can't accept your requital?" She shot back almost immediately.

"I beg your pardon?" Confusion married his face and fogged his brain, while his olfactory senses took in the soothing scent of her body and her cascading dark waves.

"I asked-----what if I don't accept your requital?" She reiterated her words, her cheeks resembling ripe Kashmiri apples.

"You deserve it, Inu, why won't you accept it?"

"Because if I do, I would give credence to the gospel that I am his stepmother. People in our society don't even appreciate a biological mother enough for all that she does for her child because, as per the conventional opinion, it's her job, her duty. Whereas in the case of a mother-child relationship where they are not related biologically, the mother is basically hailed for performing even the most basic tasks for the child. Why? Why such partiality?"

Mahadevan sat still, unable to conjure up an answer to her question.

Hinduja took a deep breath and continued, "Let me tell you, the term stepparent in the general public is almost always associated with things like pity, favour, sympathy, condolence, misfortune, cruelty, broken family, broken child, strained relationships and often sorrow as well. So, when a stepparent does even the bare minimum for his or her child, he/she is acclaimed as a superhero, whereas a biological parent might even lay his life down for the kid, and it would still be considered as a part of his parental duties in the eyes of the society. Now whether this is hypocrisy or not, I don't know, neither do I want to know, because the reality is not always like how they portray it in the daily soaps, movies and books. Every so often, stepchildren actually suffer because of the lack of emotional bond and connection and the other times, due to the grievous atrocities inflicted upon them, but that doesn't mean that every stepfather or every stepmother is the same. Some of them to all intents and purposes really know how to love, how to embrace a soul not connected to them through blood. As a consequence, I just want to make sure that a year or two later, when my Anirudh starts going to school, none of his teachers look at him with pity, that none of our relatives perceive him as a broken child subjected to cruelty, as if he is someone from a broken family. I don't want people to stare at him with sympathy and ridicule him just because his mother is not genetically related to him. No, never, I will never let that happen to my child."

She felt a soft peck on her shoulder blade.

Her fingers tremored, yet she continued. "I am a human too, Dogra Sahib, I feel emotions too. I won't lie---it hurts---it hurts like bi*ch at times, the realization of the certitude that Anirudh is not a biological part of mine hurts, the fact that it's not my womb he is born out of, abysmally hurts, like a sharp sword piercing straight through the very core of my soul."

She paused, peering affectionately at the sleeping toddler a few centimetres away. "But then I realize, that no matter what, he'll always be around me, laugh around me, grow up into a preschooler, then a sunny school-going boy, then a healthy adolescent and finally into a handsome adult, efficient in his professional endeavours and also capable of starting his own family, competent in being a loving husband and a responsible father. And I as his mother will have the right to watch him make the most out of his life and revel in the beauty of it. No matter what, I will always be a witness to his every struggle and every giggle. I think of the certainty that wherever he'll go, he will always be known as our pride, our joy. And that's it, that's all it takes to cool down my burning spirit." Saying so, she placed her warm palms on his freezing cold hands. "Now tell me, if I were to be Anirudh's biological mother, would you still thank me the way you thanked me some time ago?"

"I don't know, possibly no." He tried to answer back as honestly as possible, his large and sturdy phalanges combing through her satiny black tresses.

"And, that answers your question, Dogra Sahib." A faint smile appeared on her profile. "I have never wanted to become his stepmother, neither have I ever wished to become his biological mother. All this time, I have only ever craved to be rightfully accepted as his mother----just his mother, no prefixes attached, but just the woman he so adoringly refers to as his 'mamma'." Her voice was heavy with emotions. "That's it, that's all I have ever desired and all I'll ever want. I don't need you to thank me for all the things I do for him because those are my liberties as a mother, I just need you to let me do them."

Turning her around to face him, Mahadevan kept surveying the female species in his arms---his wife.

Half of this woman's beauty stowed in her sagacity, her veracious words of insight, her perception of the world, her modest simplicity, together with her forbearingly demure yet resilient temperament.

He felt blessed.

"Alright collector sahiba, as you wish." He respectfully replied.

"By the way, this little chimp didn't even shed a drop of tear himself, but he more or less made Dr. Pradhan cry on his behalf." The moment she finished, Mahadevan's rambunctious chortles resonated in the room. "Aakhir beta kiskaa kai?" He swaggered with a smirk.

"Chup karo Raavan ki aulaad warna utth jaayega bachaa mera!" She hit him on the shoulder to stop him.

He guffawed even louder.

Fifteen minutes later, all of them were lying on the bed with Anirudh in between when Hinduja felt someone hovering over her. "Sleep tight, tigress, your cub is fine." Delicately caressing her glabella with his lips, he recoiled back to his initial locus.

***

In the wee hours of the sunrise, Hinduja woke up to find her family dozing off tranquilly.

After checking his temperature which was back in the normal range, she set her boy's soft black jiggly spirals across his head.

She was wiping the drool off from the corners of Anirudh's pouty lips when she found him trying to reach out to hold her hand while still deep in sleep.

She reciprocated by holding his hands instead. "Easy there, little cub. Mamma will never leave you alone."

Tears finally rolled down from the confines of her impenetrable obsidian eyes as she tenderly brushed her lips against the toddler's forehead, his chunky little roseate fingers snugly clinching her white Cashmere shawl.

In the most harrowing incarcerations of her soul, she had found her peace in his ruddy cheeks, innocuously mischievous eyes, ebony curls, toothy giggles, and unexpected peekaboos.

She will quell her own breaths off before letting even a wisp of agony prick her tiny tot—beyond the shadow of a doubt.