The Birth of a Daughter – A Mother Re-Purposed - September 4, 2026

 

“When Allah wants to renew your purpose, He blesses you with a daughter.”

- Kay S

My darling Sheetal,

It is the same day and date of the year again, 28 years later - the day you, my darling daughter, my angel who gave me purpose, came into my life.

This Friday morning of September 4, 2026, dawns melancholic in its mood as I sit here in Dubai, far far away from you, reminiscing about the most auspicious day of my life - this very day, 28 years ago, when you were born in the wee hours of the morning at 3:15 a.m., when even dawn seemed to be waiting to welcome you into this world in the busiest cities of the world, New York City.

By a strange twist of fate - or perhaps providence - two years after I had relocated back to India, I decided to return to New York to discuss my sister's and brother's future with a father who had forgotten his responsibilities. I remember promising the Consular Officer that I was visiting for only 15 days.

But, as they say, “Man proposes and God disposes.”

Never could that saying have been more apt in describing my life and the turn of events that followed.

I had never wanted to deliver you in a country that had given me so many painful memories, albeit alongside considerable professional success. After returning to India and marrying your father, I had settled into the first of my many ventures, happy and comfortable to finally be back home.

My pregnancy with you, however, was extremely high-risk. I had been on bed rest from the third month to save your life, and it was only with great difficulty - and after solemn promises that I would not strain myself - that my lady doctor permitted me to travel.

On July 16, 1998, after the rituals of Valekaappu, celebrating you, my unborn child, and me, the expectant mother, held in our own home surrounded by relatives, employees and friends because I did not have a maternal home where it would traditionally have been celebrated, I left for New York.

July 17 seems, somehow, destined to create history in my life.

I landed in New York on July 17, just as I would land in Dubai on July 17 almost 22 years later - another arrival that would change my world.

I had lost both my life as I knew it and my mother in New York. I never wanted to become a mother there.

But fate had other plans for you and me.

I developed contractions on the flight. I was rushed to the hospital, only to be told that I could not travel back until after you were born. I would need constant NSTs, sonograms and bed rest.

July and August of 1998 passed amid apprehension, false contractions, stress and tension.

My father and stepbrother (Anu Mama) had absolutely no clue that I was arriving. I landed at home shocking the living daylights out of them. They could not imagine anyone being crazy enough to travel in the seventh month of pregnancy - especially with a high-risk pregnancy.

Well... that crazy person was your mother!

The next 45 days passed both uneventfully and eventfully while I prepared to welcome you, my precious bundle of joy, into this world.

And, Cheetu, before I had even seen your face, I had begun dreaming about the person I wanted you to become.

I wanted to raise you to be a great human being.

An intellectual - of course, considering all those encyclopedias and books I read aloud to you, absolutely convinced that you were listening from inside me!

I wanted you to grow into a compassionate, empathetic and ethical human being.

Looking at you today, perhaps you really were listening.

And then September 3rd, 1998 dawned.

I was at the hospital for my normal weekly testing that morning, only to discover by afternoon that I was already five centimetres dilated.

There was no going home.

They wheeled me into the labour ward and, lo and behold, the most shocking revelation awaited me.

Elmhurst Hospital had been renovated.

And the ward in which my mother had died was now the labour ward.

I was admitted there.

Déjà vu would have been an understatement.

Memories rushed through me like a tsunami, an avalanche. Yet somewhere beneath all of it was an inexplicable sense of peace.

Perhaps Mom was watching over me.

Perhaps she had been waiting there for you and me all along.

The entire day and night passed between pain and suffering and, strangely enough, plenty of comical happenings. It was Labor Day weekend, and there I was literally labouring in a hospital running on skeletal staff! I laboured through Labour Day, LOL!!!

I breathed and smiled my way through the contractions, much to the chagrin of nurses and doctors who apparently expected me to be howling in distress.

And finally, the moment arrived.

2:30 a.m.

I started crowning, but there were complications.

Your heartbeat was dropping.

You were in distress, they told me.

If I did not deliver you within the next half hour, they would rush me in for a Caesarean because you might die.

My blood pressure shot up.

A mother in the neighbouring room had just lost her baby, who had been stillborn.

And suddenly, my greatest fear was no longer what might happen to me.

It was losing you before I had even held you.

Fear engulfed me.

But when God watches over you, and when He has already decided your fate and your future, nothing can stand in the way.

You were destined to be born.

And I had waited so desperately for you because I wanted a girl child - an angel who would fill my world.

I had been so certain throughout my pregnancy that you were a girl. And then, seven months into it, the entire world seemed determined to convince me otherwise.

“It’s a boy!”

Even random New Yorkers I met in hospital corridors and elevators confidently declared that I was carrying a boy.

And somewhere along the way, perhaps I began believing them.

Then came the moment that would divide my life forever into two parts:

Before you.

And after you.

3:15 a.m.

You were born.

And, unbelievably, I was still so convinced that you were a boy that I did not even ask whether you were a girl or a boy for almost twenty minutes!

I was haemorrhaging badly. My blood pressure was high. The doctor who had delivered you looked nervous, beads of sweat forming on his forehead as he asked someone to call the blood bank.

Amidst all that chaos, a nurse finally looked at me and asked:

“Don't you want to know what baby it is, Mommy?”

She apparently thought I was unhappy because I had delivered a girl - as, sadly, some Indian mothers were in those days.

And then I asked the magical question that changed my universe forever.

“What baby is it?”

Pat came the reply:

“It’s a girl, Mommy!”

And, Sheetal, my universe changed. My pain, my suffering, my hemorrhage all that was irrelevant to me.

In that instant, I knew my mother had blessed me by somehow bringing herself back into my world through you.

The room where I carried memories of losing my mother had now become the room where I became a mother.

Even today, I struggle to describe what that means to me.

Then came the most beautiful sound.

Your cry.

Except it didn't sound like an ordinary baby's cry to us.

You seemed literally to be crying:

“Allah... Allah...”

My stepmother heard it.

The nurses heard it.

The doctors heard it.

And my stepmother laughed and said:

“That's because her mother believes in Allah and is always saying that!”

In that moment, with Allah as my witness, I made a promise to myself.

I would never knowingly allow you to go through what I had gone through.

I would give you the education and opportunities I had never had.

I would fight for you.

I would protect you.

I would build whatever road I could so that someday you could walk farther than I ever had.

You were the cuddliest, most precious bundle of joy ever to arrive in my life.

But you did something far greater than simply make me a mother.

You re-purposed me.

You gave my life a new purpose.

Because you existed, I began living again - determined to give you a better life and, if I could, a better world.

Forty Days Later...

October 1998.

Just forty days after you were born, your American passport in hand - a privilege the entire family seemed to be in awe of - I packed you into the monkeybag carrier, held you close against my chest and boarded a flight back to India.

Alone.

I was nervous as hell!

You had given me a hard time for the previous month, almost as though you were protesting being there and demanding that I take you home.

Your birth also seemed to bring a sudden lucky streak to your grandfather, who won the lottery multiple times that month. So you returned to India with gifts galore packed into suitcases...

...alongside a year's supply of diapers!

And then there was the guitar.

Your Anand Mama - my cousin brother - had asked me to buy him an Ibanez 470 guitar. I managed to find what seemed like the only piece in the whole of New York City.

And guess what protected that precious guitar during its journey to India?

Your diapers!

Yes, Cheetu.

I lined an Ibanez guitar case with your stash of diapers to cushion it during travel!

We laughed about that story for years afterwards.

Most surprisingly, throughout that 23-hour journey, you slept like an angel - waking only to feed before promptly going back to sleep.

When we finally landed, an entire entourage of family, students, employees and friends was waiting at the airport.

You arrived as though you were a celebrity making your grand entrance on Earth.

And in my world, you most certainly were.

Watching You Grow

Your arrival was one of the happiest moments imaginable for me, your father and my siblings.

Not everyone shared that happiness. Your paternal grandparents and aunts had never wanted another girl child in a family that already had around fifteen.

Not that I cared.

Not that it made one bit of difference to my life.

You were my daughter.

My angel.

My blessing.

As you grew into the bubbling, happy-peppy child that you were, you filled our home with happiness and became the apple of our eyes.

I captured those moments.

Some you will find in your memoirs. Others are tucked away in albums that hold the visual history of your journey to the woman you are today.

And today, I find myself maudlin, Cheetu Maa.

Perhaps because I realise again that nobody can replace a mother. And perhaps nobody in this world can completely understand a mother's feelings and sacrifices - sometimes not even enough to offer a word or gesture of kindness, compassion or solace.

Then, a couple of years later, the Y2K year did not merely bring chaos to the world of technology.

It brought you one of the greatest gifts of our life.

Your precious brother.

Shreyas.

Your Chiyaas.

Your thamma papa.

From the day he was born, you were the most endearing, caring and affectionate sister. You stayed with me in the hospital while I was in labour and saw him almost from the moment he entered this world.

Watching the two of you together gave me another reason to believe that perhaps I had done something right.

As I watched you grow - bright, intelligent, intellectual, compassionate, caring, empathetic and respectful to elders - I kept remembering Mom.

I remembered her upbringing.

Her wisdom.

The lessons she imparted even while she lay on her deathbed.

And I often wondered whether some part of her really had returned to me through you.

Then came the years when you struggled.

Watching you suffer from depression during high school wrenched my soul.

My baby girl was hurting, and every instinct in me screamed that I had to do whatever I could to help you.

I thank God for the day Aswani Mama suggested that I take you to a child psychologist. That counselling helped us identify the problem, and you bounced back.

Because that is what you have always done, Sheetal.

You bounce back.

You rise.

You fight.

And somehow, you turn your wounds into wings.

The Years That Tested Us

The way you and Shreyas stood by me while I was divorcing your father, and the way both of you trusted me to make the right decisions for you, kept me going for years.

You may never fully know how much strength I drew from the two of you.

When much of the world seemed to have decided that I could not possibly be the right parent to raise you, you and your brother believed I was.

And sometimes, my darling, that belief was all I had.

As time passed and you grew older, we tried to return to the United States because things were not working with your father. When that did not happen, I took up senior leadership positions to support us while winding down the fourth venture I had built - four years after starting it - because I needed custody of both of you.

Then came Pune.

I remember how you and Shreyas stood behind my decision to move there and restart our lives.

And then came one of the hardest decisions I have ever made.

I suggested that you move to New York.

You were seventeen.

Seventeen, Cheetu.

Even today, when I think about it, I wonder how I found the courage to send my little girl halfway across the world alone.

But perhaps the greater courage was yours.

You agreed.

Because somewhere, you understood what I was trying to do.

I wanted you to have a better life.

The trials and tribulations you endured when you first arrived in the United States...

The decisions you had to make single-handedly...

The jobs you took to support yourself through college...

Being a full-time employee and a full-time student...

And still making the Dean's List with a perfect 4.0 GPA.

Nothing about that was ordinary.

You proved yourself every single time life tested you.

Every naysayer.

Every bully.

Every pessimist.

Every person who underestimated you.

Every person who tried to break your spirit.

You answered them not merely with words, but with the life you built.

I still have the letter you wrote to me when I was diagnosed with cancer.

You wrote:

“Mom, we are not ready for a life without you; so stay alive! Get well soon.”

I will cherish that letter until the end of my life.

At a time when I was being handed what felt like a ticket to heaven, my children were ordering me to stay!

And I listened.

That letter reminds me of what I did right.

It reminds me of how you and your brother see me.

It reminds me that sometimes children save their parents too.

Sending you away was one of the most difficult and terrifying decisions of my life.

But I knew I had to do it if you were to have the future you deserved, away from the vicious ideas and circumstances that surrounded us then.

And as though leaving itself was not traumatic enough, the three of us almost died in the Chennai floods just as you were preparing to leave India.

Twelve days later, when the waters finally receded and flights resumed, you flew out of the country alone.

I had already been forced to return to my work in Pune.

I could not even see you off.

I think a part of my heart turned to stone that day.

A stone that has hurt ever since and probably always will.

But I do not regret the decision.

Because I look at the woman you became, and I know your future was worth every painful moment that preceded it.

Twenty-Eight Years Later

And so here I am today.

Twenty-eight years later.

Writing to you.

Writing because there are things a mother carries inside her that her children may never completely know unless she puts them into words.

I write with pride.

With gratitude.

With humility.

With memories.

With a little pain.

And with more love than these words could ever contain.

I need to record these feelings because perhaps one day, long after this birthday has passed, you will want to read them and understand something your mother may not always have known how to say.

I may not have been able to give you everything you wanted.

Perhaps all I could do sometimes was pave the road ahead, give you the basic education I could provide, and push open whatever doors I could find.

But there was one thing you never lacked from me.

Love.

My love for you never diminished.

It only grew.

And grew.

And grew.

I have not seen you for so many years now.

Some people may call me a bad mother because of that.

You never did.

Neither did your brother.

You understood that I had a purpose I still needed to fulfil on this Earth, and both of you encouraged me to go and find the place where I could fulfil it.

And somewhere across those oceans and those years apart, our relationship evolved into something extraordinary.

You became so much more than my daughter.

You became my friend.

My soul sister.

My mentor.

My companion.

My co-conspirator in mischief.

My counsellor.

My greatest critic.

And sometimes, my greatest source of strength.

You have celebrated my little victories and my big ones.

You stood in my corner cheering for me.

You believed your mother was your superhero at times when I felt anything but heroic.

And perhaps that is one of the greatest gifts a daughter can ever give her mother.

It has been years since I held you close in my arms, felt your presence beside me or heard your voice in person.

Of course, that hurts.

Some aches simply become part of us.

But knowing that you are safe, successful, happy in your world and thriving gives me peace.

God and His angels are watching over you.

My sacrifices may never be understood by most people in this world.

But you never questioned them.

You simply kept striving.

And thriving.

Sheetal, thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Thank you for trusting me.

For believing in me.

For walking beside me even when thousands of miles separated us.

For supporting me.

For encouraging me.

For correcting me when I needed correcting.

For making me laugh.

For being my daughter and somehow also becoming my friend.

And most of all, thank you for becoming a woman who makes me indescribably proud.

I hope you will find it in your heart to forgive me for letting you go so far away, all alone.

But please know this:

I let you go because I loved you enough to let you fly.

At the time, it was the only way I knew to protect you and build the future you deserved.

And, my goodness, did you build that future!

You have done extraordinarily well for yourself.

I often wished that life had served me a more sumptuous menu and dealt me a better hand of cards.

It didn't.

But I am infinitely grateful to the Universe that it dealt you a better hand.

So always remain exactly who you are - confident, ethical, compassionate, soulful and absolutely rocking.

Never allow anyone to tell you otherwise.

And yes, I apologise for turning a birthday message into a blog and becoming terribly soppy and cheesy!

But I am creating memories.

I am recording the thoughts of a mother because thoughts unrecorded can disappear with time, while words have a strange way of staying behind.

Being a single mother was somehow easier simply because you existed in my sphere - standing beside me with that lovely brother of yours, my precious Chaami.

So, Cheetu...

Go conquer the world.

Travel.

Create epic memories.

Laugh loudly.

Love deeply.

Read endlessly.

Take risks.

Build things.

Break barriers.

And live - really, truly live - because you deserve every beautiful experience this world has to offer.

Baba Jaan will always protect you and walk beside you. He sends loads of blessings and wishes your way.

Your ethical barometer has always been so high that I have little doubt you will continue setting examples for others and inspiring people simply by being yourself.

And while travelling through this journey called life, keep gathering wisdom from the books you read.

And yeah!

Thank you for being such an avid reader and carrying forward my legacy.

Of all the things I gave you and your brother, I am so glad that I introduced both of you to the world of books and knowledge from the day you were born.

It shows.

It shines through the brilliant, intellectual blogs you write.

Your birthday today is not merely the celebration of another year.

It is my celebration of you - the girl child who beat the odds and became a winner.

We all win some.

We all lose some.

Ultimately, perhaps life isn't about counting what we lost.

It is about recognising everything we gained along the journey.

And when I look at your journey, I see my little girl showing the world what travelling from ground zero to somewhere above the sky looks like.

Congratulations, my darling, on coming this far.

On achieving so much.

On becoming so much.

And on making me so enormously proud that today, 28 years after I first heard you cry “Allah, Allah,” I can only look upwards and say:

Ahamdulilllah.

Thank you, Universe.

Thank you for bringing Sheetal into my life.

Thank you for giving me the privilege of being her mother.

And now I realise I have just called you “her” again.

Perhaps because even after writing all these words directly to you, there is still a part of me standing outside that hospital room 28 years ago, looking at that frightened young mother and wanting to tell her:

You have no idea what that little girl is going to mean to you.

Treasure this memoir, Sheetal.

Keep it somewhere.

And someday, when life troubles you, when the world feels unbearably heavy, when somebody makes you doubt yourself, or when you simply feel lonely, come back and read it.

Read it and remember who you are.

Remember where you came from.

Remember everything you overcame.

And remember how fiercely you have been loved from before you were even born.

At 3:15 a.m. on September 4, 1998, you entered this world...

...and completely changed mine.

You were born that morning.

And in so many ways, Cheetu, so was I.

Perhaps that is why, after 28 years, I finally understand what your birth really did to me.

You didn't merely make me a mother.

You re-purposed me.

Happy Birthday, Chinmaa!

May the Universe shower upon you an abundance of success, happiness, health and prosperity.

May life surprise you beautifully.

May your dreams continue to rise higher than the skies.

May you travel to places that take your breath away, meet people who enrich your soul, read books that challenge your mind, do work that gives you purpose and build a life that makes you wake up every morning grateful to be living it.

May you never lose your compassion.

May you never compromise your ethics.

May you never allow another human being to determine your worth.

And whenever life knocks you down - because occasionally it will - remember what you have been doing since you were a little girl.

Bounce back.

Rise.

And rock it!

I miss you loads, my darling.

More than these words will ever adequately explain.

But wherever life takes you, and however many oceans may separate us, know this with absolute certainty:

You will always have a home in my heart.

I love you to bits and pieces.

And if I were given the chance to go back 28 years and live this entire journey again - the fear, the fights, the sacrifices, the separation, the tears, the laughter, the madness and every beautiful little moment in between - I would never trade a single minute of being your mother.

Not one.

Stay blessed, my sweetest angel.

Happy 28th Birthday, Sheetal.

 

With every bit of love this mother's heart can hold,

The Mom that you call “Diva”

September 4, 2026 | Dubai