Stories      
A Shadow from Past Life
by Dr. Manasi Dutt

For the birth of our first child, our daughter Maureen, it took four hours for labor pains to intensify and another four hours to deliver. After 10 hours she was born. The young female physician looking after the baby told me ‘Your baby is too small’. The young physician put Maureen inside an incubator and rolled the incubator beside my bed. I told the young physician my daughter is not too small, all the babies of our family are of this size, ‘I’m a small Woman I can't give birth to a big baby’ still the young physician insisted on keeping Maureen inside the incubator.

I watched Maureen intently. She had large eyes and with those round big eyes she looked all around, her eyes were calm and collected there was no surprise, no fear, no nervousness, and no hurry. As though everything was familiar to her. She knew the delivery room, the equipments the running around of the nurses and doctors, as if she had seen and experienced all these before. As if she also knew how babies were born. I started to wonder, had she seen all these in her previous life? Was that the reason why everything appeared familiar to her? Had she also delivered babies in her past life? I wondered.

As Maureen kept on watching with her calm eyes I looked on at her. A short time later Maureen was taken to the Special Care Nursery and I was taken to my room. I was exhausted. I dozed off. Next morning Maureen was brought back to my room and the young physician informed me ‘Maureen might be a little small but she has the maturity of a full-term baby’. I was relieved to hear that.

After Maureen started going to junior school she was always the best student in her class and she always left the impression with her teacher that she had already known the subject matter before the teacher had taught it. The teacher shared this impression with me because she found it rather strange. In grade 4 one Friday Maureen asked her teacher whether she could bring the math book home. In Canada the books are supplied by the school. As a result, the books are the properties of the school. Maureen was allowed to bring the book home. During the whole weekend she worked on that book and by Monday as she returned to school she informed her teacher that she had finished the whole book. The teacher was indeed taken by surprise because the whole book was supposed to be taught over one year and this was only the beginning of the school year. How could she do that her teacher wondered. Once again I wondered whether Maureen had brought her knowledge from her previous life to this life.

I knew a thought like this is illogical and unscientific. So I didn't share it with anybody.

Later on when I discussed the matter with my husband he pointed out that the books are written very logically step-by-step and Maureen just followed the steps and could bring it to an end. We let the matter rest there. I asked Maureen ‘how did you do that?’ ‘I just did’ she answered with a shrug.

In due time, Maureen finished her schooling.

She decided to get into medical school and in due time she finished her undergraduate degree from the local McMaster university.

After that she received a scholarship from an ivy league in the USA. There she did her Master’s in Public-health and Master’s in Business Administration.

Maureen's friends and our acquaintances told us what Maureen was doing was very stressful and demanded very hard work. But Maureen didn't seem to mind the work-load she had to carry neither did she mind the stress she had to bear. That surprised many people. The same old thought surfaced on my mind, did she know some of these materials from her past life? And carried them over to her present life?

This kind of question always remains unanswered and I have to live with that. Still I feel there is no harm in asking.

On her return from the USA Maureen started her residency program in a big city in Canada. One day on her return home in the evening she announced very enthusiastically and happily ‘Mom, today I had the youngest patient in my clinic. I delivered a baby. It went really well, I was not at all scared and everything came easily to me’. The same old thought as I had at the time of her birth came back to my mind. Did she already know how to deliver a baby? How a delivery room looks like? How the machines in the delivery room are? From her past life? Has she brought some of her knowledge to this life? That's why delivering the first baby came so easily to her?

As I already mentioned this kind of question has no answer and I’m not going to seek one. Let it remain unanswered, untold, hidden in the cave of my mind.

But is it really an illogical and unscientific question?

When I look at Maureen, Do I at times look at an old Hindu Sage who has brought some of her knowledge from the past to the present life? When you look at your own children do you always see just ordinary children? Or at times do you see some kind of an inexplicable shadow lurking in the background?

Perhaps my questions are not so illogical and unscientific after all. Neither are they that inexplicable.     

December 17, 2006  

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The Week of December 17, 2006              
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Modus Operandi of Empires by Gaurang Bhatt, MD 
China: Balancing Power Relations in South and South-East Asia
by Col. Rahul K. Bhonsle
Special Economic Zones: Boon or Disaster? by Ramesh Menon
Manmohan Singh's Dangerous Declaration of 2006 by V. Sundaram
Health of Nations by J. Ajithkumar 
Is there non-discriminatory Rule of Law in India? by V. Sundaram 
In Their Right Minds by Linda Light
Ethnic Issue Overtakes Nepal's Class War? by Rita Manchanda
Looking Ahead in Gujarat by Manjari Sewak 
Look Who's Talking! by Manisha Parekh 
World Brotherhood: Love and Peace through Poetry by Shernaz Wadia
Science, Arts and Literature for Human Culture by TA Ramesh
River from the Land of Mystique Spells Doom by VK Joshi
Keeping Thyroids in Order by Fehmida Zakeer 
HIV/AIDS Bill -Pushing the Legal Envelop by Kajal Bhardwaj 
Papiya Ghosh: From JS to an End by Dr. Amitabh Mitra 
Hope for Battered Women by Marlinelza B. de Oliveira 
Homework for Men by Mini Sharma
The Perversity of Periyarana by V. Sundaram
A Shadow from Past Life a Story by Manasi Dutt 
Romancing the Desert by Attreyee Roy Chowdhury
A Rebel of Innocence - 3 by Ashwini Ahuja
Roads in Chennai by Glory Sasikala Franklin
My God, What Have You Done! by Dhiraj Bhimji Raniga
Sensationalism and the Media by Rajesh Talwar