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assured me that the operation was over. He patted my shoulder, in an attempt to comfort me. I didn’t make any eye contact with him either. Nor did I speak.
    When he asked me to get up, I didn’t move. When he left me alone and went away to consult the dentist about what I should eat and what I shouldn’t, I got up unnoticed and walked out of the room.
    While walking out of the cabin, I came across a washbasin with a mirror installed on the wall above it. I looked at myself. My nose and lips were still inflated. There were a few bloodstains on my shirt and around my lips. I tried to open my mouth. I wasn’t able to feel anything. The effect of the anaesthesia was still there. I was merely able to pull down my lower lip. I saw cotton stuffed in my mouth, surrounding my front upper gums.
    The dentist shouted from behind me: ‘No! Don’t take the cotton out!’
    I tucked my T-shirt into my shorts and walked out of the room alone. In the meantime, Dad had finished his conversation with the dentist and followed me out.
    ‘Chalo, ghar chalein,’ [Let’s go home] he said, and took my hand.
    I didn’t say anything but followed him—
    —but not before slipping my fingers out of his hands.



6
The Question of Birth
    It was late in the night on my seventh birthday when the most intriguing thought of my life crossed my mind. Mom had switched off the lights long back and I was in my bed. Day-long celebrations of my birthday and the euphoria of it all had left me quite tired by the end of the day.
    Yet, I was awake. My eyes were focused on the fluorescent minute and hour hands of the clock on the dark wall in front of me. Technically, in the next fifteen minutes my birthday would be over. So I was revisiting the series of events of that special day.
    It had been a perfect birthday. In the morning, Dad had said special prayers on my behalf in the gurdwara. At school, I was the only student who wasn’t in his uniform but in his new birthday clothes. I was the one for whom the entireclass sang
Happy birthday to you
, and, in return, I had distributed chocolates to my classmates and my teachers.
    In the evening, for the very first time, I had cut a cake on my birthday. Till then, cake-cutting wasn’t a practice that my family followed. After many requests from me, my parents had agreed to a cake-cutting ceremony. So Mom had borrowed an oven from someone in the neighbourhood and baked the cake for me. It had seven cherries on the top. For my cake-cutting ceremony, I had made sure that I invited only those friends of mine who would bring gifts for me. For dinner, Mom had made my favourite rajma chaawal. It was a beautiful day and I wished for it to never end. And yet here it was, slipping out of my fingers …
    As soon as both the hands of the clock hit twelve, I closed my eyes with the pleasant feeling that it had been seven years since my birth.
    … seven years!
    … since I was born!
    … SEVEN years … like … one … two … three … four … five … six … SEVEN years!
    … since I was born!
    But how the hell was I born?
And my eyes flashed open.
    It occurred to me suddenly.
Yes! But how the hell had I been born?
I thought to myself.
    Seven years had passed and this thought had never struck my mind, ever! All of a sudden, in the darkness of that night, the fact that I didn’t know how I had arrived on this planetstarted bothering me. Never before had my own existence in this world been as thrilling for me as it became on that very night.
    I spent the next few minutes tackling my anxiety. I pacified myself by thinking that there was nothing to worry about, and that I would soon find out how I was born. However, sleep had run miles away from me. The Einstein in me had raised his head, and I needed this complex mystery of How I Had Evolved to be unveiled.
    I had some vague thoughts and theories of my own.
    Maybe Mom had planted a seed in our garden and I came out of the plant!
    Maybe I had been dropped from the sky during