Symbolism Of The Stork

- A Quaint Symbolism That Is Fast Becoming Irrelevant
- "The real mechanics behind the arrival of babies was revealed for the first time in secondary school when the lanky, curly-haired, hollow-cheeked, poker-faced Biology teacher flipped the pages of the textbook to reach the last chapter. In a span of two (or was it three?) hours spread over as many days, the good man taught us everything there was to know about the science of producing babies, as laid down in the chapter -- which was a few pages of dry narrative of hormonal changes at puberty, jumping directly to the first fused cell in the womb, with labeled sketches of the reproductive anatomy of the two genders alongside. Both the textbook and the teacher took care to keep the attention of the class riveted on the mechanics, and just the mechanics. Focused as one was on the forthcoming board exams, one didn't really bother to figure out what was left out and why.


A pregnant gravida. The stork is on the way, and will land beside the mother with its precious cargo, any moment now.
Up until that time, one naively believed in the parental teaching of babies arriving in a cloth-sling carried by the stork in its beak. Or that the baby got brought in by an angel or fairy. One would like to cling to the conviction that back then was truly an age of innocence. Ah, then what about the occasional titter from the backbenches while the reproduction lecture was on? There were obviously people in the room who had apparently been there, done that, seen it all? Or the sudden giggle in between stony silence from the group of girls seated on the segregated chairs? These were obviously people who had already been made aware by their mothers of the significance of the moon's proverbial monthly pull, besides of the unabashed stare of the boys? But one would like to dismiss these trifle incidents as aberrations.

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* 'A Country Romance' - painting by David B. Walkley, 1st-art-gallery.com. At this age the heart tugs at some special person, the feeling is mutual, and you can't understand why. Knowledge of the carnal side of the coupling is still hazy, and knowledge of how the stork comes into the picture is (usually) absolutely unknown.
Hints about the missing gaps in the last chapter of the Biology textbook came about sometime during the under-graduate course, when it was discovered that the real reason behind a fellow girl-student not coming to college was that she was in the family way. Shocking it was when it came to light that the person who had bestowed motherhood status on her was the bloke who used to pester one for physics lab practicals' data! Whoa, where did he get the knowledge to achieve this feat? And to think that he used to ask us the solution to the glabrous patches on his cheeks, as no amount of lather and rigorous shaving seemed to work! Well, one's own knowledge was later brought up-to-date after leaving home to stay in hostel for a post-grad course. A steady supply of VHS tapes from the underground network ensured that nobody was left without the right education. These tapes adopted a demonstration-centric pedagogy and used case studies lifted from real-life situations to eruditely fill in all the missing details, the details which the Biology teacher had been so careful to leave out. Talk of being exposed to new knowledge after flying the nest!"


* Image of a stork taking rest after those hectic deliveries in one single day, sxc.hu/bugdog. In certain cultures, at one time, VHS tapes "from the underground network" helped dispelling the notion about the stork's function in the universe as carrier of infants. The stork must have been relieved to have such onerous responsibility lifted off its slender beak!
The gentleman's description of how he was exposed to the arcane knowledge of sexual coupling between the-yin-and-the-yang is one of a kind and is reflective of the culture and upbringing he was a product of. Now contrast this description against the recent report of a kid aged 11 achieving the feat of becoming the youngest dad in the world, and also with the recent reports of six-seven year olds found conducting their own workshops and practical demonstrations in the school premises with other six-seven year olds, and you begin to see how dramatically the age of maturity has been lowering. Yesterday's "VHS tapes from the underground network" are today's streaming media files, easily available to any knowledge-seeker smart enough to fudge the content-control software. Children of the permissive internet age, the new crop. Tell these kids that it is the stork that brings the child in a sling-cloth, and the derisive smile is a big hint that the tactic didn't wash. Bed-time stories are in a desperate need for overhaul, as the cocooned innocence of the earlier era no longer holds valid.


Still, there is this charming daintiness about the symbolism of the stork landing on the doorstep of the gravida, waiting for the right time to deliver its precious cargo into the lap of the mother. Parents of an earlier age weren't very particular, but today's parents note the precise time when the delivery happens, right down to the last second. This time is then eagerly fed into the computer to cast a comprehensive horoscope that peers into the infant's future to pronounce how they will fare in life. And the date is firmly etched in the memory of the infant as they grow into a child and then into an adult, as a day of celebration. In other words, this is the time when people expect to be wished a Happy Birthday!


This moment and this day becomes an important occasion for us as we grow. It is important enough to be marked in red on the calendar. We look forward in eager anticipation as the day approaches. What gifts await us? Who will greet us on our big day? The cakes and the balloons and the confetti and the party-at-home and the photos and the videos hold a special place in our memories. The mythical stork may not be present in flesh-and-blood, but its remarkable act of delivering us into this world is never forgotten, indeed is avidly remembered in ever more stylized fashion, even as we ironically become more and more cynical of our fairy tales.


Practitioners of astrology lay great importance to the time, date and place data about our birth. Does the stork know that an entire profession earns its living on what its tiny head decides when it should deliver the baby? These folks have divided the year into twelve neat compartments, given a special sign and name to each compartment, and given the whole contraption the fancy name of "zodiac". And, depending on the Sun's position in the sky when the stork did its act, they then allot you one of these twelve signs, for you to identify yourself with for the rest of your life.

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* Wheel of the zodiac: This 6th century mosaic pavement in a synagogue incorporates Greek-Byzantine elements, Beit Alpha, Israel; wiki
Once allotted, it is very easy to know what will happen in one's future by simply reading the one paragraph they publish in the astrology columns corresponding to each sign. Don't read just your sun sign, read also your moon sign, some of them say, for the moon too exerts an influence on your destiny. Hold on, there is another school of astrology that asks you to read the paragraph for the sign to which the first alphabet of your name has been allocated, for that is the hook to your soul, they aver. Which means that slowly, one after the other, you end up reading the entire zodiac! Then there are the Chinese animals... It's kinda very mind-boggling, this whole business of peering into the future. So much ado about the date and time when the stork decided to drop your package in your mother's lap! This stork must have been one very wise being, after all!


* Vasudev carrying his newborn infant across the river Yamuna, www.krsnabook.com. The child is no ordinary being. He is Krishna (or Krsna), an incarnation of God Himself. Vasudev and Devaki, his parents in human form, are in prison, where the Child took birth a few minutes ago. Vasudev is shown in this image walking from the gaol in the city of Mathura to Brindavan, a village across the river Yamuna. Notice how the flooded river has parted in the middle, to give way to the Child's passage. Observe also the Lord Serpent, Sheshnag, following the duo, covering them with His hood to protect from the lash of the rain. Vasudev is going to the house where the child's to-be-foster-parents reside, and where the lady of the house is herself undergoing labor. Vasudev will deposit Krishna next to the foster mother, and return with the lady's newborn daughter. Why, did the stork goof up in delivering the wrong babies to wrong gravidas? No, this was how it was ordained, in one of the most complex plots ever Written. Such a dramatic beginning to life was indeed very appropriate for a Being whose entire Life was going to be eventful.
The astrologers don't give you a zodiac sign alone, they also give you a personality to go with it. Reading up on the personality of each sign and then gauging whether a certain person will be compatible is a favorite pastime for people belonging to the impressionable age. This Aries is a fierce, independent personality - are you sure you want her as team-member in this project? Or, that Aquarian is a very cold and distant fella - do you think you will be happy after settling down in marriage with him? We begin to form opinions about the people in our life based on the stereotypes created by the personality descriptions of the astrologers. And since the whole of mankind appears to be avidly lapping up these stereotypes, it must be okay, right?

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* Linda Goodman's 'Love Signs: A New Approach to the Human Heart', Amazon.com. People of a certain age and temperament dive into such books to read up on the personality type of the person they have a crush on, in order to assess both their mutual compatibility, as well as to learn the other party's buttons: what turns them on? And what turns them off?
It is cool and hip to compare the personality of somebody we know with their description in the astrology books. But introspecting on our own personality with what the books have to say about us can be very amusing at best and very confusing at the worst. Take the sign of the Leo, for example. This sign is ascribed to every individual born between July 24 and August 23 (give or take a day-or-two on either side) of any year. Google on this sign and site after site describes the typical Leo as a flamboyant being with a sunny and cheerful disposition, spontaneity being their middle name, an extrovert who is the life of the party, always hogging the spotlight, the person who wears their heart on their sleeve, the person who falls in love at the fastest speed, which according to some is even before the first hello is said. That's not me saying all this! That's what the astrology sites have to say about the Leo sign.

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* The image of Leo, one of the signs of the zodiac, sxc.hu/anna076. Upon a section of the population has been bestowed the image of a proud, vanity-prone, praise-seeking, spotlight-striving, attention-grabbing, always-flirting, "I-have-said-enough-about-me-now-you-tell-me-what-do-ya-think-about-me", leadership personality. What if you were born in this particular period and do not possess these traits? Do you have the right to exist?
Now what do you do if you happen to be a Leo who is not flamboyant, who prefers deferred gratification to spontaneity, who does not really crave the spotlight but does not really shun it either, who is an introvert with their own inner world for company, remaining out of reach to all but the most select of people, who is most likely to keep their passions hidden rather than allow them to be the grist for gossip, and who will never ever be caught taking the creeper's route to the balcony but who would rather wait - till eternity, if need be - for the proper invitation to walk in through the front, main door? I know of one such Leo who faced this dilemma - an identity crisis, almost - during the crucial impressionable age of their life before they decided to throw the astrology book in the dustbin and live their life the way they truly are. So much for personality stereotypes!

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* Clips from the 1957 movie, "An Affair To Remember", performed by Cary Grant, Deborah Kerr, Richard Denning and Neva Patterson, YouTube.

The storywriter must have imbued in Nickie his characteristics after opening the astrological personality book on the page of the Leo. So you have Nickie donning the role of the typical playboy, playing the incorrigible flirt whose affairs are chronicled by the paparazzi across the continents, moving around in the corridors of the transatlantic cruise ship, witticisms in hand, proverbial heart on the proverbial sleeve, searching for some "bright and bubbly pink champagne" to pass the time.

Not surprising it is when this man falls head-over-heels in love with Terry, a woman on the same trip. The surprise element is the man deciding to drop anchor for the first time in his life. Nickie comes of age in one poignant moment of epiphany, when he discovers the truly Leonine trait of self-dignity and self-respect, and when he makes up his mind to work for a living, instead of living like a parasite off the wealth of the women he professes to love. The urge to prove themselves, to live life on their own terms, is what distinguishes the Leo, according to the astrologers. Nickie's voice cracks when he mouths the words proposing marriage to her. Human frailty, haha!

"If I worked hard enough and long enough for six months... where would you be." It's a good thing that the two together enter into a pact that will help overcome their present difficulties and pave the way for their marriage. Let's meet six months later, on July the 1st, 5 o' clock, at the top of the Empire State Building. How wise. The pact commits them both to follow it through. So when one of them is unable to make it to the venue at the appointed time, it leaves the door open for the other party to ask, why. In the absence of any such pact... well, to each their own!

"Hold the thought", Nickie stops the woman when she tries to work on Plan B in case Plan A stumbles into problems. That's a typical Leonine trait too, isn't it, to always be optimistic, to always presume that everything will work out the way they have thought it would? Plan A will work, hold the thought! Now see what happens. "Don't you agree when someone doesn't keep an appointment, they should apologize?" "...Then you weren't angry when I wasn't there. I mean, you must have been, at first!" If only you were more realistic, Nickie, you wouldn't have had to wait at the top of the building in the thunderstorm till midnight!

It could be of academic interest to ponder over what zodiac sign the storywriter ascribed to the female protagonist. A very conscientious lady, loyal to the man she gave her heart to aboard the ship, Terry hides her mishap from Nickie till such time that she recuperates using her own resources. And she naively trusts in destiny when she presumes that after she does get back on her feet, she will not only find him, but also that he will be still be there, still available, and still waiting. What does this Neptunian cloudiness make her? A Piscean? Or a Sagittarian? Or Virgo? Or some other?


Celebration of the day the stork delivered us has also brought upon us the social custom of greeting each other a happy birthday. Depending on the breadth of one's social network, one mentally braces oneself to be the happy recipient of wishes, come their birthday. From proprietors of small firms to HR departments of companies, from office-bearers of social clubs to the tightly-knit family and close-friends' circles, everybody performs this ritual of wishing the birthday boy or girl a very happy solar return. We also take this occasion as a benchmark to test the strength of our special relationships with the special people in our life, validating how much they care for our feelings based on whether they remember our birthday.


So far, so good. The problem is when you have to reciprocate by expressing your gratitude to the person who was gracious enough, whatever their motive - personal or professional -, to have remembered your big day. One can understand the problem of responding to birthday greetings for celebrities, who get them by the truckload! But, celebrity or no, it appears that it is slowly becoming a chore to respond to each letter, SMS, or email that has come in, mouthing and typing the same thanks over and over and over again. Then there's the additional chore of doing unto them the same greeting when the time comes for their particular birthday. Has this custom lost its zing, like the notion of the stork? Or is it that I am getting too old to enjoy this custom's finer elements? I have come across generic thank-you messages on the Facebook wall, from members who wouldn't be bothered to respond to each connect who wished them a happy birthday. So is this now the new trend - dispense generic, instead of personalized, thanks? Has greeting people on their birthday... as well as responding to the greetings one receives with gratitude --- become passe?


They have already developed a bot which reads a file containing the email addresses sorted on the dates-of-birth, and which shoots out the birthday greeting message to the birthday person's email address on the appointed day. Good, so sending greetings has been taken care of. And because no cathexis was invested in the act of sending the greeting, the sense of hurt or upset is not there if somebody does not respond. Being a non-sentient being, the bot is impervious to such emotions, isn't it?


Now may be they will come out with a bot that will automatically read birthday greetings received in our mailbox, respond to them with a clinically precise "thank you", no cathexis invested again, and be done with it. Henceforth, the ritual shall be played between the bots, and after having one more social custom taken care of by machines, we can continue with our living, whatever is left of it. Nobody will ever have cause to feel hurt or upset again.


May be this custom is becoming outdated, like the tale of the stork. May be the time has come to create some new custom, one that is a truer reflection of the more evolved state of human consciousness.



* A Ghazal from Jagjit Singh's 2009 album titled "Inteha", sung by Jagjit Singh, YouTube/coolsweetgirl123. The ghazal may be summarized as follows:

[With time and distance, some memories fade. However, certain memories remain fresh, forever.]

When you place the mirror before you, you will remember me...
When you fondle your tresses, I will come to your mind...
It won't be easy to forget me... the more you suppress thoughts of me, the more forcefully I will return...
Remember, how once we had got wet in the rain? Now when you get soaked in the pouring waters, that incident will flash before you...
When it is the season of sadness and sorrow, you take refuge in my memories....
And come the time of celebration, you lose yourself in the embrace of thoughts of me...

To this may safely be added the line -
"When you celebrate your birthday, you will miss me."

The picturization of the ghazal has singer Jagjit Singh himself essaying the protagonist, playing his age. Then was it an error of judgment, Jagjit-ji, to cast a young female artist for the role of the hero's love-interest in this clip? Shouldn't the heroine's role been given to a female artist of the same age as the hero? On some reflection, this choice of a younger artist appears apt. Isn't it the case that when we remember someone from the past, we continue to hold the imagery in our mind of the person as they were then? So we forget that this person must obviously have themselves weathered the four seasons all these years, just like us. Typical human fallacy, don't you think? It doesn't help to not have at least a photo of the heroine, either of the youth or of the present time... if only to refresh and update the imagery. To give credit where it is due, the young artist essayed the role of the reminiscing woman very nicely! God bless you.

Tell me now, O heroine, how you have been spending your recent birthdays. Ever since the first communication from him revealed to you for the first time his love for you, life has taken on a different color and flavor, has it not? And what revelations they have been! Delivered in such creative ways. Like a TV program that is beamed across the world; but only your remote has a special, descrambler button. One after other, some of the deepest secrets of his life which not a single soul in his physical vicinity has even the remotest whiff of, he has unhesitatingly shared them with you. The mask of inscrutability, that innocent, "unaware" indifference having stripped away, he stands before you, his true feelings for you now open to you in their full nakedness; feelings that you had always _known_, but never received any "official" intimation about. Very delighted you are now, aren't you, at this turn of events? Elated... pleased as punch. It shows on your face. Your lovely smile now sparkles even more as you keep musing, over and over and over again, the time you spent with him, and the feelings he had for you, from his eyes. In fact people around wonder why you look so positively radiant and glowing these days! If only they knew the source of the radiance and the glow is such a long distance away!

These revelations also gift you the most precious gift of a secret haven, a haven which is exclusively yours and yours alone, a haven which you frequent almost everyday. Oh you just have to press the descrambler button and the door to your haven opens! It feels so good, once inside! You emerge so refreshed, so rejuvenated, your belief in yourself restored.

At a long distance he may be, but the two of you have once again resumed such a nice, cozy relationship, and so what if it is virtual. Once inside the haven, the two of you have together dived into so many rich worlds, explored so many treasures. Those of the European philosophers, for instance. And the Chinese. Those exquisite paintings of the West and the exotic artwork of the East. The poems, the haunting songs, those movies that the two of you have together virtually watched on YouTube - and later you rented the full movie to grasp it in its entirety... It is difficult to stay away from him for long. After arriving at a new place, you search for the first opportunity to touch base with him. As if saying to him, "Here I am. Sorry I was away." An internet-connected machine is your best friend! Sometimes people find it difficult to pull you away from those screens... well, what do they know. What do they know.

He has changed your perspective, your outlook towards life. Towards life and love. Well it is natural, isn't it, considering that you spend your entire twenty-four hours by seven by threesixtyfive with him? Awake and asleep, you have him on your mind, always. And makes no difference who is there in the physical realm. You have learnt his outpourings by heart by now, haven't you? You can now instantly recognize his style, the flow, the orderliness, his thought processes, his favorite turn of words and phrases, from the crowd... right down to the choice of his font and color! His words reverberate your being.

In those days too, he used to occupy your entire mind-space. Today, he has reclaimed that same mind-space yet again. Just as you have owned his mind and ruled his heart - forever. Reflect, and you will realize that certain crucial decisions that you took at some turning points - they were taken because your calculations about him went, uh, askew. Decisions that came to impact... everything. Just like his presence permeated your being with the fragrance of love, his absence too cast a shadow.

Come your birthday this time around... yes, yes, I know, I know. I know how restless you were, weren't you, to find out _whether_ he communicates this time; _how_ he communicates this time; and _what_ he communicates this time? He hasn't let you down, how could he? He loves you, you see. Was there ever your birthday that he forgot? You might have forgotten his birthday but not he. This came to you as a surprise? Sad.

After having received a greeting from him on your birthday, therefore, the least that you can do is to respond with a grateful thanks. Not a demand. Just a wish. A single, luminous point of intersection of your life-paths, magic recreated if only for just that one moment, before journeying forward to wherever destiny is bent upon taking - is what your thanks would mean to him. You owe this much to your very own deeply personal memories too, don't you? The single, luminous point of intersection means the world to you, too? Yes or no? Your eyes, your beautiful eyes, are betraying you. Tell you what? You never could disguise your feelings from me. Not then. Not now. Not ever. How is that? Because I am you. And you are me.


While the quality of relationship between us and the people around gets subtly tested every time there is a birthday being celebrated, the deep significance of this occasion comes about when we turn inward on this day to get in touch with our very own Sun that supplies the energy that fuels our existence. Our birthday is the time --- when we reiterate our gratitude towards the stork that carried us to the doorstep from where we launched a new innings called life, when we reaffirm our faith in ourselves, and when we recognize that the greatest gift that we can give to ourselves today is to make a firm decision to live the balance bloc of our life, not by the expectations nor the standards set by the others, but by our own. Our birthday is the time --- to commit to eliminate any detritus that we may have allowed to litter our world, to let go of situations that and people who have outlived their purpose, and to begin the process of rebuild.

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* A pillar holding up some edifice somewhere in the world, sxc.hu/edmond. It is always good to be on the lookout of any cracks in the walls that cannot be papered over anymore, or any crumblings that cannot be mortared any further. We have to be willing to demolish and reconstruct the edifices if need be. And the best time to assess and implement is the birthday.
Talking of the stork and birthday celebration, it is a delight to announce that today happens to be this blog's birthday, too. Quest for Nirvana is three years old. Let the rest of the world run bots to celebrate birthdays if they want to, but let this blog be not bereft of this innocent pleasure! While the 100th article on the blog was published this day last year, this particular article happens to be the 139th.


This blog shares its birthday with Janet Lee Weiss, drummer associated with Quasi, the indie rock band (image courtesy - http://www.sleater-kinney.com).
Conceived sometime in the January of 2006, it took the literal equivalent of three trimesters for the blog to be delivered. Astrologically speaking, QfN was born on the cusp of Libra and Virgo. Libran Sun, and if I remember correctly, Virgo Moon, with Saturn retrograde. One would like to think that the blog possesses the traits normally ascribed to the personalities associated with these signs: like a Libran, it strives to expand the breadth of the subject coverage by giving a balanced perspective of all sides, and like a Virgo, the blog seeks to acquire depth in its probe of the finer details of the issue under focus. The backward-moving Saturn is reflected in the blog's disposition to introspect and keep looking back into the past, the rearview mirror so to speak, in its quest to learn from history and to search for answers to unresolved questions.

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* The Scales, the zodiac symbol of Libra, zodiacsplace.com. The 180th degree of the ecliptic. The sign of Libra - set of scales - in itself is incongruous in the wheel of the Zodiac. While every other sign is symbolized by some animal or creature - whether human or mythological -, this sign is unique because it has a mechanical, non-living device to represent it. It used to be said that once upon a time, the "scorpion's claw" represented that sector of the sky. In time, Librans must have come to be associated with the scales because of the Equinox. The time when darkness and light are of equal length. Perhaps that is where the feeling of trying to achieve balance, comes from. Something this blog too strives to achieve.
Searching for how else the blog could closely personify a human Libran, I came across a very cryptic message written for this zodiac sign by New York-based astrologer Mr. Michael Lutin, and I quote him verbatim: "No matter how close you are or once were to your family, sometimes circumstances may force you to move thousands of mile from home, even change your name, get a new face and completely divorce yourself from your roots and origins. Eventually, however, years from now you will find yourself sitting right there across the table from individuals you thought you would never see again. It will show you how powerful those early relationships are, and how much they influence your emotional life forever." It's got something to do with the technical mumbo-jumbo of Pluto's transit into Capricorn in January 2008. A small, distant object, whose identity as a planet is itself now in question, can exert such powerful influence on us human beings! While the deep, hidden meaning behind this message might require some deciphering by Librans, I am still working on how it might be applicable to the blog!


For those amongst you who hold this day significant, here's a very sincere and heartfelt birthday wish to you; do accept the humble gift of this article composed to mark the special occasion of the stork's special delivery of you to your mother! May your years ahead be filled with divinity and pure bliss! Meanwhile, join me, please, in cutting the cake!


Thank you for your greetings, graciously accepted on behalf of the blog.

Till the next year, then. Until the next birthday.