Baby's First Outing: The Nishkramana Sanskara

Here the first outing means a pram, a park and whatever the weather allows. My mother in Pune had a view about the right morning and a Melbourne June had a different view. Two of the windows fell after eight, which is the earliest you take a baby outside here in winter. She took the later one without arguing, and that is not how these conversations usually go.

I wanted to be the one who carried my great grandson out of this house the first time, and a man my age does not assume there will be a second chance at a thing like that. So I did not wait for anybody to work the morning out for me, I asked for it. The days to keep away from came printed underneath.

We had been in Bengaluru eleven days and the baby had not once been out of the flat, because nothing in that month had been decided on purpose by anybody. I bought this the way I bought the shifting date, and the window was for Bengaluru and not for Pune, which is the part I had half expected to be wrong.

My wife said the child has not been past the gate in forty days and told me to do something about it. Nobody consults me about children. They consult me about fodder. I did the one thing I know how to do, which is look at the day, and for once what was asked of me took four minutes.