Baby in the womb
Hemanta Acharya
Sydney, Australia
I was happy. My friends were my detectives, they were my source of energy and they were my protectors.
I had a big family in my small world. My home was surrounded by darkness but I could still see. I can certainly say I used to live in a lake, surrounded by dust and different chemicals floating around me. It was a quiet place but I would always hear various voices coming from nowhere. I could never see my friends and family talking but I would still hear different voices claiming to be my family. Again I would hear gentle whispers “my baby… Hey, my baby… Not long to go” which claimed of being my mother. I heard a different kind of voices, some soft, gentle and affectioning and some high pitch, rough and medium. As the time passed, the voices became clearer and I also started to recognize few voices which I heard the most. Sometimes I would hear voices discussing themselves, planning for something major, something that would mean everything to them. Sometimes I would hear that gentle voice cry and sometimes make a weird sound. That would even shake my world… Like if there were small episodes of the tsunami reaching my home. As I started growing older and older, the tsunami-like episodes became more frequent along with the weird sounds. I was really scared when it started to occur almost everyday.
Seriously, I was scared. I knew my world was surrounded by a thick layer of the blanket which I could rarely see through and I always thought my families were with me. Just surrounding me.
Apart from that, I would hear that soft and gentle voice becoming excited and nervous. I couldn’t believe I actually started to feel connected to the voices which I have never seen. I know it sounds weird and unusual… as if I was talking to the Alien from a different part of the world that may not even exist. It actually was a different world for me! an unknown voice coming from nowhere, claiming to be part of my family who I have never met. It had actually become part of my everyday life.
Whenever my legs touched the blanket surrounding my world, I could feel someone from somewhere touching my legs. That would provide me a sense of warmth. Next minute I would hear giggles and excitement and I would sense a joyful environment somewhere near me! somewhere close to me.
Day by day, I started to grow bigger and bigger. The blanket that protected my world started to stretch. How long could it stretch? It was very congested. At the same time, I would hear various music that even increased my heartbeats. There were days where I just wanted close my ears or just listen to that soft, gentle and affectioning voice, just that voice.
As I was expanding, the blanket was becoming thinner like “a balloon expanding while blowing”. One day, I heard a voice crying, a voice who claimed me of being my mother. By then I had started to call her mother. I heard my mother crying very hard. While my mother was weeping, my friends around me were becoming stiffer and stiffer. In every scream some unseen forces were pushing me, I was sliding, it felt like the blanket was loosening, it was opening from somewhere where I finally slipped into. The last thing I remember is my heartbeat slowing down. After that, I couldn’t sense anything for about 30 seconds. Finally, my heart began to beat again, I just started crying without any reasons and opened my eyes. As soon as I opened my eyes, I had an instant eye contact with something that looked like a big object with beards, big eyes and way bigger size than what I used to see inside the blanket. When I looked around, there were few of them like that bearded object and many of them with long hair.
At first, I wondered why they were all laughing while I was crying and it was surprising to see their faces filled with joy, happiness and satisfaction. It felt like I was on a different planet with Aliens of different types. One alienated face came close to me and tried to pick me up. I couldn’t control my fear and started crying as his touch was unusual than the previous experiences that I had inside the blanket. It felt like I was in an open space surrounded by Aliens. Suddenly, I heard that soft and gentle voice again “Baby… Hey.. My baby. That was the voice I had been hearing for a long time which I was desperate to meet personally. My mouth automatically stopped making sound and looked around for that particular voice. I heard a giggle again from the alien-looking objects and my mother who looked the same like other Alien; bigger in size, with eyes, mouth to speak and they were able to move around on their own. In one hand I had slowly started to feel belonged to the place, people and surrounding and on the other hand, I was starting to forget my life inside the blanket. After few years, I started to realize that the Alien looking objects were human beings, my relatives and I was slowly becoming like one of them, growing like them, with eyes, ears and most importantly I was able to walk on my own.
Gradually, I came to know that the blanket I was referring was my mother’s womb where I grew up until I was 9 months. Furthermore, my friends inside the blanket were the arteries and veins which transported nutrients and protected me from outside environment, and I was popping out from my mum’s tummy into the world where I am living now.