Birth as a metaphor!

It was one of those days, when the house was under a cleanliness drive. We opened the base drawer of our cupboard to search for a document, and instead, found small pieces of shredded paper and plastic strewn all over. In between was the gold-medal graduate degree that Anita had won, which now hinged on frayed paper. We laughed at the sight of the once-coveted degree, which had been useful to someone at least! As we began clearing the mess, we found tiny, pink-coloured little ones of a rat. They – all five of them – were shivering in the tattered mess of our documents! We put them to safety, wondering about how our bedroom had suddenly become the ‘maternity’ ward this year!
A few months back, on hearing squeaky noises from underneath our bed, we unearthed tiny kittens, perhaps a day old, in a discarded tyre of my two-wheeler. The mother cat jumped away and we were left with different coloured kittens eying us with suspicion. We picked them gently, turned a box into a comfortable home for them. We fed the lactating mother-cat milk every morning and watched in wonder how the cat took care of the little ones. Once a dog, sniffing easy prey came near the maternity box without expecting the ferocity of the mother-cat. It was a sight to see him run away with his tail tucked under his legs! She growled at us; bring her teeth whenever we tried to touch the kittens. She relaxed when the kittens were able to play on their own, but she kept an alert watch with nonchalant eyes!
Next, a few weeks later, a bitch chose our backyard to give birth to a litter of puppies. They were brown, black and a mix of both, lying in the comfort and warmth of the mother dog. Sakhi put a cloth for their comfort, which later got turned into a toy to play with. Again, we marveled at how dutifully the bitch nurtured her puppies until they were independent.
More importantly, I am wondering at this sequence of births at my home. Is there a signal which I am missing? Why all this now at this stage in my life? I tried to see the meaning and its connection to my present stage, particularly in the context of nurturing EarthCare Designs and Swaraj University whose birth we witnessed a few months back. As I grope and grapple with the changing tides to keep afloat the fledgling organizations, I am gripped with anxiety sometimes. Tossing an idea about is one thing, turning that idea into reality is something else altogether, fraught with highs and lows. However, if an idea is asking to be born then we have the power to nurture it with care, give it meaning and cultivate its growth. The beauty is to see the power which resides in all of us, to take care of our babies of all sorts.
Perhaps, that’s what the cosmos is suggesting – nudging me to believe in the wealth of resources I possess, including love, and harness them into meaningful creations!

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