25th September 2006
In fact, this date now represents not just one but three important events from your life (all of them were not from the same year, though). The first and foremost is it being the date of your birth here in this city, of course.
You were the only daughter of Satyajit and Celeste Tagore and you were also quite possibly the most treasured thing in their lives. They would have even sacrificed their own lives for your own betterment, if there was ever a need for that, based on how much they loved you.
Of course, all good parents somehow have that mindset indeed, don't they?
What were you expecting?
******************
You interrupt me in the midst of my narration to tell me with an adorable frown, "What do you mean by that? I never said I was expecting anything..."
I laugh softly with my fingers covering my lips. "No, no, I was just being a little sassy. Just like you, perhaps?"
"You're not doing it right!"
"Not like you necessarily remember how to do it right yourself at the moment, though."
"Oh, just shut up and move on, please."
"How exactly do you... 'shut up' and move on with a story, Silver?"
You sigh softly and whisper, "Madeleine, please, yaar..."
I feel a little bit guilty for all that as I soon realise what condition you are in so I lean my mouth upwards to your forehead, giving you a little kiss there as I hold your face. "Relax, my love, I'm sorry," I say lovingly while stroking your soft locks of translucent grey hair.
You smile at the forehead kiss and place another softer one on my cheek. "Okay, jaanu, I forgive you. I mean, it's not like you did anything wrong, anyways. Also, you only act like this around me, right?"
I nod in response before I decide to continue with my narration when I pull away.
******************
You were born here in this city of Kolkata to a rich and well-to-do North Indian family called the Tagores, as I was saying previously. Your father was Bengali (though, he mostly spoke only Hindi and English, not much of Bengali for that matter... but he also really did speak that language at times and was really fluent at it, too) and your mother was from Goa, so she was not exactly 'North' Indian, and she also bore some distant Mexican roots as well alongside that.
The one thing that most people remembered of you happened to be those silver eyes which you possessed throughout your lifetime.
Hence, you eventually received the famous nickname that was Silver.
And as far as I had been told, those eyes lead to a slight confusion between your family members – who all had deep brown eyes – considering none of them had essentially known the eye colours of all their ancestors too well and even the basics of dominant and recessive alleles in biology.
It did not turn into a heated conflict, though, that I must say.
However, they did carry out a DNA test to entirely confirm that you were their child after some time, so do not worry. Nonetheless, this was not because there was a lack of trust amongst your family members, but rather because they were simply curious to know why your eyes were of that rare and unusual colour.
But either way, you happened to be such an adorable little baby girl by the time you were born (as all babies are by default, of course).
So fragile, so tender, so pure...
... so beautiful.
You were just slightly bigger and heavier than the average size of a newborn, I believe, and you had pudgy little hands, that resembled a kitten's paws somewhat, that could not be kept to yourself for they appeared to have a mind of their own, I suppose. They were mostly seen trying to hold your parents' and grandmother's fingers or perhaps gripping on to the bars of your cradle at the hospital, too. You had the softest black curly locks an infant could ever have, they were of the same colour as pure black obsidian, and your darling little eyes were so full of life and observant of their surroundings.
Oh, those beautiful silver eyes.
The eyes that stole away my heart and soul many years later.
You entered into the light of the Living World through a vaginal birth instead of a C-section, and you were crying and screaming loud as ever during that very moment. But as commonly known, the crying was clearly taken as a healthy sign with regards to any newborn baby and your parents were obviously relieved that you turned out just fine considering all the measures your mother took to ensure you had a safe birth beforehand.
Celeste used to be a rather heavy tea drinker and would have some of it at least four times per day before conceiving you but she decided to sacrifice that with the greatest difficulty due to the fear of it ultimately being a source for pregnancy complications (she never drank alcohol or smoked so she didn't have to worry about those, therefore only tea and coffee were the things she had to put down for the time-being). She also made sure to do all the necessary workouts, eat extremely healthy and just try not to take too much stress into mind despite still having a full-time job as a Human Resource Manager in a decent sized organization in Kolkata at the time (she actually gave up on the job soon afterwards, too, to take care of you after your birth, in fact).
Your mum, your dad and your dadi all used to spend time saying sweet stuff to you while you were still in the womb, along with reading all those lovely children's stories to you at that during those days. And Celeste also used to try taking day-offs whenever she could to go for her regular medical check-ups just to make sure you were okay at all times until those precious nine months, prior to the beginning of your story, were fulfilled entirely.
Basically, she had at least fulfilled a lot of the basic requirements needed to be done by mothers when they are expecting a child very soon and thus you were born healthy as ever.
They named you Adelaide Shivanya Tagore.
Yes, my beloved Shivanya, that was your true name.
What beautiful name for a beautiful soul!
And that was the name you were baptised with soon by the time you were introduced to Catholicism as an infant.
You were the youngest child amongst all your cousins altogether in your mother's extended family so you turned out to be the cherished little darling of them all. They all brought you gifts, wanted to hold you and cradle you in each and every one of their arms as if you were some sort of baby angel sent from above. And in turn, your parents also took you to church often around by then, as per your grandma Khanak's wishes, to get rid of any buri nazar bestowed upon you by anyone with unknown malicious intent.
Yes, that was the story of your birth.
You continued to remain in India as a child until the age of five.
And then your parents and dadi took you away, eventually moving into Birmingham around the near end of year 2011, of course. And, I must say, there were indeed quite a few major reasons on why they had decided on migrating into England by that time.
✦ . ⁺ . ✦ . ⁺ . ✦
05th December 2006
A few months after you were born, that was the day God decided to make me take up my official membership to humanity in a small part of Birmingham called Saffansbury. I was the only daughter of Lopez Wolf and Magdalena Alvarez; my dad was mostly a native Brit, who also had some close mixed Latin American and Arab roots, and my mum was a pure Argentinian immigrant who had moved into Saffansbury by around 1997 before marrying my father in 2004.
Now, let us get to the very first and basic things the two of us had in common so far:
We both happened to be women of colour and we both had some Latin heritage alongside that.
We were both the only children our parents had at the time.
Both of us were born in the same year (that was 2006).
Both were baptised Catholics shortly after our births.
However, along with those similarities, there were still some differences between the two of us even during that time, too, as should be expected of any two perfectly unique individuals so that neither of them would be taken as 'clones' of each other, of course.
For starters, while you were born with all your limbs perfectly intact, I was born with a stump on my left leg beyond my knee, which meant I had to rely on a bunch of prosthetic legs for the rest of my lifetime.
We were born in two different countries.
I had no Indian heritage.
My family was not rich but rather on the side of the middle class.
I soon turned out to have poor eyesight, just like both my parents, so I had to start wearing glasses after the age of two.
I did not cry or move or do anything immediately after I was born.
I was almost declared a stillborn baby.
Let us get to that story then, because it was indeed a true miracle (to me and my family at least). It was a sign that death can only happen as long as God wants it; I suppose He really wanted me to live on and eventually die much later.
And another thing is... no one can ever choose death.
Rather death chooses you.
God Himself chooses the time for you to leave.
I wasn't even born in a very big hospital but instead in a smaller one from our little neighbourhood because my parents were not able to afford a proper hospital appointment for my delivery at the time. I hardly had a heartbeat immediately after I was born and there were no signs of life by then.
No crying, no movement, no shitting.
Nothing.
So, they all presumed I had croaked as soon as I had been delivered.
I had no big extended family surrounding to see me then, so it was just my parents and the midwives (things definitely may have been much less complicated to handle because of that). I remember my mum and dad telling me how much they had kissed and cradled my lifeless little body in hopes that I would turn out to be alive by that.
There was no response. Not too soon, at least.
I suppose my soul was still comprehending and trying to adjust into the Living World at the time, to be honest.
(Not like I have any choice not to be honest right now as a spirit, Shivanya!)
******************
"Now, hold on, Maddy... just a little thing I was wondering about randomly... regarding the whole thing where spirits can't lie... can't we at least be sarcastic after death? I mean, we can, right? I'm pretty sure I've done it," you ask me as you remember that one statement I had told you earlier before I started narrating our stories.
"Well, you can be sarcastic as a spirit, but you can't intentionally lie with malice or any other unnecessary intent and spread major misinformation."
"Ahhh, love the sound of that. Also, why do we still say 'to be honest' and 'honestly' and stuff a lot despite knowing that we can't actually lie right now?"
I look at you as if you are simply an utter idiot (which you actually were during your lifetime even) and I mutter, "Why do we still breathe now despite being dead?"
Your eyes widen as you purse your lips in slight embarrassment, I suppose, and you say, "Okay, I get it now. It's just out of habit?"
"Yes, Shivanya," I say with a bit of a snigger as I shake my head.
"I love the way you say my real name."
"Thank you! Now, can you stop distracting me and let me go on with what I must say?"
"Go on, I'm listening."
Henceforth, I decide to continue with the story of my mistaken stillbirth.
******************
They eventually handed me to the midwives after all the cradling and continued weeping silently together. I would have never let myself do that horrible thing to them if I knew how to control my heartbeat and if I even had an ounce of sense about life back then.
Oh well, I was only a tiny little baby at the time, anyways, so what could I have known or done even?
As the midwives continued checking up on me to see what may have possibly been the cause of my stillbirth, they soon discovered that my eyes had somehow snapped open at one point and I was moving the toes of my right foot and all my fingers, too, while also waving about my left leg's stump gently. I was also looking silently around the whole place and at all the people. There was a dull heartbeat by then.
I was alive after all.
They eventually announced that good news to everyone present there and I immediately began to cry a little as I was handed over to my parents. How overjoyed they would have been by then! How overjoyed I am right now that God had let me live back then so that I was able to grow up being raised by my wonderful parents; how grateful I am to Him for allowing me to take my time to become a doctor, writer and pianist in life; and how happy I am to have lived my life for much longer so that I would be able to meet you in my childhood, love you throughout the time and become your bride on that one felicitous day later on in my adulthood.
My parents later named me Piper Madeleine Wolf.
I came to be known as Wolf to the rest of the world.
And I was called Pip by my family...
... but you were the only one who referred to me as Madeleine or anything else representing that name specifically.
Now, these things are not considerably significant things to mention but I just felt like it would be better to tell you all of this.
You see, we had known each other for most part of our lives: it all began from the time when you had just turned five up until the time of my death before yours.
I met a little girl under a starry, starry night sky welcoming a brand new year.
My destiny became intertwined with hers as it was all written in those stars.
You know that girl was the very one who grew up into the woman that was you.