Offspring Blues - Kalai Selvi Arivalagan (ebook reader txt) 📗

Chapter 1

‘The tiny plant embryo embedded in the seed remains dormant and when the conditions are favourable it germinates.’

Celina read the sentence again and again. In this world, even the plants are blessed. God has given them the ability to spring into life when the conditions are favourable. But, why has God not yet blessed her like that. She found it difficult to arrive at an answer for this question.
Will it not be great if she also has that option of going into dormancy when conditions are not favourable to lead a happy life?

Every day in the evening around 4 pm, Celina starts to collect jasmine buds from the climber. She collected at least 700 buds and started to make a long strand of jasmine flowers. It usually took 45 minutes for her to finish the strand.

After a few unsuccessful attempts, Celina succeeded in getting the climber grow. She got the sapling from her friend and took the maximum care every day by watering it regularly. Whenever she sprinkled water on the sapling she always prayed to God and wished the plant will grow new leaves and roots and grow in her home. Finally when the plant started to grow, she felt happy that her prayers were answered.

The climber climbed on the thin stems of the pomegranate tree and spread across the top of the tree. After the collecting fresh buds for the day, she never forgot to spend time to cut away the dry twigs and short stubs from where buds are picked up.

Chapter 2

Whoever meets Celina for the first time will be shocked to see her permanently closed right eye. Though her facial features looked sharp and impressive, there was no right eye and instead of eye lashes, the right lid of the eye bluntly closed the place. To compensate this loss, her left eye looked beautiful with the bow like eye brow and thick eye lashes. The brilliance in the left eye smiled at any one who looked at her. To avoid the embarrassing look from the onlookers, Celina always wore the pair of sunglasses that her father gifted on her birthday.

It took time for Celina’s parents to accept the fact that their daughter has to learn to live with the only eye. So, they never failed to give her the confidence and hope that she will achieve her best in the life.

Celina decorated the small statue of Mother Mary with the strand of jasmine flowers. As her mother insisted, she then decorated her dark, silky, plait of hair with the remaining strands of jasmine. Slowly, the jasmine buds unfurled and spread a deep fragrance across the room. The strong fragrance of the jasmine flowers literally made her plaits smell with an inviting fragrance and Celina named it as fragrance of love.

Whenever Celina went to her college wearing strands of jasmine, the place around her smelt so strong with that fragrance of love and made people stare her plait of hair admiringly. People who always looked her from behind took her to be one of the charming girls. She looked tall and attractive with her well built shoulders. Her thin waist added grace not only to her posture but also to her luring walk.

Chapter 3

Every day it was a treat to watch birds preening their feathers. Celina loved to watch the birds sitting and preening on the big mango tree in the backyard.

In birds, preening is a behaviour that helps them to maintain hygiene of the feathers. Birds usually use their beaks and feet to preen their feathers.
As feathers are the main asset for the birds to fly in the air, they take the utmost care to maintain cleanliness. Sometimes, birds preen mutually which showed their mutual love and affection. Once Celina burst into a loud laugh when she saw a little sparrow bundled into a position like a ball while preening.

Usually during the morning time, crows or mynas or sparrows that come to pick the morsels left at the backyard would fly away immediately, if they heard human steps. But while preening, they never paid attention to things around them and looked more studious and concentrated in cleaning their feathers. For Celina those hours never looked long and tedious. Without moving her eyes away from the birds, she sat watching them.

Celina’s thoughts took her elsewhere. Do men and women have preening behaviour? To tell the truth, yes. It is interesting to know such behaviour exist with man also. Just like a woman who takes the maximum care to dress well to attract men, man also sports preening behaviours to tell his mind. Pressing down his shirt sleeves or straightening his hair is a type of preening behaviour in man which is a sign of attraction. Though Celina had watched young men doing so while travelling in the bus or walking down the street, she never came across such a thing in her life.

Unfortunately, from her front view, for all men she looked so plain and dumb and she never succeeded in attracting the attention of any men of her age. Instead they scorned at her and often teased her calling ‘one eyed ogre’.

Chapter 5

“Let me, let me.” Celina pleaded her dad.

“Wait, wait.” Her father smoothly took away the bamboo lid that covered the metal bushel. The
metal bushel was half filled with sand. Inside the bushel, Celina could see a broody hen sitting in the middle of bushel. Her father told her that the hen was sitting on a clutch of eggs and the eggs are covered by her wings and feathers.

Celina could not see any eggs.

“Where are the eggs?” Celina questioned curiously.

“They are here.” Her dad carefully lifted the left wing of the hen and showed the eggs underneath the hen.

“When will the chicks come out, dad?”

“In another ten days. But you should not disturb the eggs often.”

“Why. I want to hold the eggs for a while on my hand. Shall I?” Celina looked at her dad.

“No, Celi, then the chicks will not grow properly.”

“Now go and bring that small container with water and leave it inside the bushel. The hen may need water to drink.”

Celina brought the small container with water and gave it to her dad. Her dad carefully placed it near the hen. The hen put her beak into the container and drank some water.

Celina’s dad once again placed the bamboo lid on the bushel and asked her to go and play. Though Celina knew she should not disturb the hen, every day she spent some time looking through the bamboo lid and watch the brooding hen.

The hen rarely came out of the bushel. Sometimes Celina watched the hen slowly changed the places of the eggs under her. It did so, so that all the eggs received the warmth uniformly.

If the eggs received heat uniformly, it will definitely hatch after 21 days and no egg will go waste.

One day while Celina was playing in front of her house, her dad called her. He took an egg from the bushel and placed it near Celina’s ear.

“Can you hear the chick?” Celina could hear the soft tap of chick inside the egg.

“Yes.” She looked at her dad with a smile.

“In one or two days chicks will hatch.”

“Will you then let me hold the chick on my hand?”

“Sure. Please wait for another two days.”

Next day morning when Celina peeped through the bamboo lid, she heard the soft sound of a
chick. ‘Dad’ She screamed with excitement and ran into the house to call her dad.

Her dad counted the number of chicks that hatched from the eggs. One egg was left behind.

Celina's dad took that unhatched egg and gave it to Celina. He asked her to throw it down the drain as no chick will come out of that.

Celina threw it away near the fence. The shell of the egg broke and the remains of the egg splashed on the ground. It spread along the ground with a bad smell showing a mixture of liquid and a lump of tissues.

Chapter 6

"Do you know how to make poached eggs?"

"Hm. I know how to eat eggs". Jason replied with a smile.

"What if we make a bull's eye now?" Appu asked Jason from the kitchen table.

"A bull's eye, I don't mind, but with more pepper and salt".

"Done". Appu with a soft whistle kept the non-stick pan on the stove.

After twenty minutes, both of them started to eat their supper. The clock next door chimed ten announcing it is ten o'clock at night.

"What happened to your interview to-day?" Jason asked his friend in a serious tone.

"I will know next week. I have something to share with you today".

"Interesting. Tell me".

"To-day I went to the blood bank to donate blood. They have opened a new counter there for egg and sperm donation".

"What!" Jason looked at him with a shock.

"Unbelievable, is it happening so in Chennai!"

"What is the surprise? It is happening already."

"So, you have one more choice to donate", with a chuckle Jason looked at Appu.

"Hi, nothing wrong in it. Just like blood donation, this is also one more donation".

"Yet, I don't want to spread my seeds everywhere". Jason whispered in a low tone.

"I can see a few girls at the egg donation wing also."

"Blood donation is something precious. But this type of a thing I don't think so".

"The centre even has the facility to store eggs and sperms in the locker there."

"Enough. I don't want to talk any more on this". Jason moved away from the table to wash his
hands. Suddenly Jason felt some unknown heaviness in his heart. He could not tell why he felt so.

Chapter 7

'The tiny plant embryo embedded in the seed remains dormant and when the conditions are favorable it germinates.'

But in a human life, for some people, it has become an unpredictable task to produce a zygote or a human embryo.

Research studies have found out the declining ratio of the capability of a sperm to bump into the human egg to produce a zygote. The evolving life style of the people living in this century has degraded the quality of the human reproductive system. Along with the growing concern about the exploding population of the world, the concern to become biological parents is also on the rise.

Though Celina knew she is not alone in the world with her problem, the impact the problem had in
her life grew unmanageable day by day.

Society at large sneered at the women who failed to conceive a baby and become a mother. The social restrictions denied them the opportunity to be a part of the religious or social rituals and showed an indifferent attitude and kept them in seclusion. Just as a Raja Ram Mohan Roy