And so there she is, our baby daughter. Even after a fairly uneventful pregnancy, the birth of a baby must be among the most epic things men can witness and women can experience. The pain that women go through alone makes the experience singular, even without a whole new person leaving his/her comfortable cocoon to enter our world.

Evolution gives human babies a large head that makes birth excruciating for the mother. And yet it is not large enough for the little humanling to navigate life and it will continue to grow and develop for the next two decades. The frail helpless little thing that is capable of so much comes into the world in a drama filled with pain and blood and screaming.. I wonder if birth is what dying feels like...

.. what the caterpillar calls the end of the world, philosophers call a butterfly.

The birth of my first child is already a moment that fills me with joy, but it is not experienced as a joyful moment, it is too biblical for that. Thunder and lightening, Creation and destruction, Brahma and Maheshwara.

Shock and Awe and infinite respect.

Welcome to our world Kaveri. We shall not let you down.