what happened to her?

Hiya there kiddos!

No, this blog is not about food - it is about a dream I had today morning, late morning, after I woke up, read the paper and then went back to sleep because i was not feeling well.

More of these menopause related issues! You feel once your periods stop, you will be free
of the 'monthly curse', your body will not lose that large amount of blood needlessly and everything will be hunky dory. Wrong!! For you unsuspecting souls that have no inkling, suddenly you will feel your body is on fire, then once you have doused THAT you will feel weepy, sad, loney and totally misunderstood by the whole world.

I thought i had dealt successfully with all that - no more lurking fears.

Then i had an attack of the itches... late at night, when i am way past falling asleep, I am waiting for my brain to tell me which part of my body itches and needs to be scratched... it was a maddening feeling, deprived me of sleep for over a full month and then a Doc relative told me i should see my Gynic, for it - it was menopause related, hormone deficiency syndrome.

So I went and got prescribed this awful medicine - 4 different colored , different shaped tablets i am supposed to consume in a day, they are guaranteed to give me a headache, nausea etc. etc. AND I am not supposed to drink any alcohol 24 hours before and 24 hours afterwards..ho..ho.

So that's the long and short of why i was sleeping at that unlikely hour, of 10 a.m. when this dream struck.

I am sitting round my table with some family and friends...Radha is there, Meena too and some other folks i don't remember now. It's Diwali times and everyone is crunching away on goodies.

Suddenly the bell rings and one pretty college going girl walks in. I look at her blankly first and then i exclaim " Ohhh that is my second daugther Priya!" (Remember priya - nik nd neha?...I told you a story once and you asked 'where is our Priya?')

She says Hi all round and then i start piling her with work -
"get water for everyone...", " serve ice cream"..... clear the table... switch on the fan...no, switch it off.

She dutifully does everything i say, and still stands there waiting for more. I am amazed at the obedience and timidity of the girl and confess to my friends..

"You know this is MY daughter and I hardly know her! She goes to a college in Nagpur but I have no idea why she lives in the hostel instead of living at home. She comes occasionaly, meets me and goes away. I know less about her life than i know about - say, Radha here."

"Yes, when she came in you didn't even hug her" says Nanda, yes, she is there too.

"Right" I will do it when she goes, " she is such a sweet person,easy on the eyes too - don't you think?" I say, very impressed.

And then suddenly there is sream from inside.

"Help me! pleeaaaase someone!"
"I will die...plz help fast...MOM, where are you?"

I rush inside. I cannot see Priya but her cries reverberate from every room. They are getting weaker and fading away and I still can't see her!

And then a voice in my head tells me ' YOU killed her, in your womb, don't you remember?'

Ofcurse I remember: if I had had her when i conceived immediately after Baba died, she would have been about 25 now. But i never realized i was pregnant, when i did, we were so stressed out - both of us - that even before i could go in for a pregnancy test i had a spontaneous abortion. Its called miscarriage.

And then if i had had her much later, she would still have been in her teens or just twenty. But I was not expecting at all to get pregnant then and had been on some medication that was completely contra indicated in pregnancy. So after a lot of turmoil, after seeing two or three doctors and getting admitted to a nusring home becuase I thought I was losing the baby - I went ahead and terminated the pregnancy!

But its been years and years since I thought about all this - its the turn of Neha and Nikhil and Radha to have THEIR babies....what was Priya doing in my dream?

Or was it my just-shut-down-womb mourning its losses?