The Lateral Samaritans

Being a compassionate husband, I give my wife company during all her cravings throughout her pregnancy. As a result, both of us are competing when it comes to the size of our bellies. We almost get a buy-one-get-one-free ultra sonogram deal.

This time around, we are a little short of luck. The baby is headstrong, literally, as he refuses to give up his breach position. They say that the third time is a 'charm', at least for the delivery crew. After two normal deliveries and my endless boasting of my superwoman wife's tolerance towards pain, I guess I have jinxed her. This time she's up for a C-section.

We arrive at the emergency entrance of the hospital. As it happened five years ago with a screaming wife in excruciating labour pain, we are once again accosted by the security guard in no hurry: "Where will you be going to?"

I answer: "We have come here to have hot daal puri and masala tea."

Here's a baffled security guard while the wife is seething – both at the bovine question and the asinine answer.

I can't resist, having had gone through a short anger management session recently where I'm told that we can't control how one acts, but can surely control how one reacts. And I am at peace, accepting the fact that we are simply incapable of lateral thinking.

As such, I smile, knowing that a distant colleague of this security guard on duty at a particular House 12 answers "I don't know" when you ask him if he knows where House 13 is. It is another buddy of his in the same profession who patiently waits and watches you park your car, get out, lock the door and start walking before he approaches you saying "Sorry! You can't park here." And it is another cohort who gives you suspicious looks as you arrive and the same guard who smilingly rushes to open the door for you as you leave and then give you a smart salute in the hope for some bakshish. Oh he leaves your accompanying female companion to open her own door because the tips come from 'sir'.

Anyway, the wife is in the delivery room. I am relegated to merely holding her hand and not seeing anything as this is a C-section case. The baby is born and eventually taken to the nursery to be with a whole bunch of his friends, just hours older.

The family pours in to see the baby through the glass window of the nursery. "Looks like the father!" They exclaim as they look guiltily at the mother with a silent "Hope you don't mind us saying so." That's fine, as long as the baby doesn't like my best friend. But in an hour he will look like the mother, don't worry. The newborn changes his looks by the minute, beating even a chameleon.

The next batch of well wishers is here an hour later. They peek through the glass window. "Baby looks just like mommy!" "Uhm, this is not my kid, THAT over THERE is my kid!"

It's ok. You don't have to admire the looks of a two hour old nor compare his ever changing looks with those of the parents. All that can wait. Just be happy, which you are. Think laterally, man!

With a brand new baby in the house, the realisation is back again on how helpless we humans are, the same humans which are God's best creation. And it breaks my heart when this newborn girl is left in a plastic bag in Ashulia. But it also fills my heart with hope when a non-descript passer-by takes her to the hospital where the doctors get her back on track while twenty families and numerous couples come forward to take her in. And it is also heartening when this carpenter and his wife are out in the dead of night and on a desolate street with their six month old baby girl in seizures, where a cop stops, picks them up, takes them to the hospital where he stays put till the baby is out of danger.

These are not just Good Samaritans, they are Good Samaritans fully capable of lateral thinking. Here is a skill (of being able to think laterally), life-saving in these two particular cases, that is neither taught nor tested in our education system. We hope for the 'common' question or the chance to regurgitate the note book. We forget that real life comes with no manuals…

The writer is an engineer at Ford & Qualcomm USA and CEO of IBM & Nokia Siemens Networks Bangladesh turned comedian (by choice), the host of ATN Bangla's The Naveed Mahbub Show and ABC Radio's Good Morning Bangladesh, the founder of Naveed's Comedy Club.

E-mail: naveed@naveedmahbub.com