Tuesday, January 06, 2009

The stork delivers


... a baby girl to my brother and wife at 9.48 am GMT (3.18 pm IST).

My just-born niece shares the same star as Ashwin - Aswathy or Aswini, the first star in the Indian calendar. Aswathy is supposed to be a lucky star for girls and I am told gals born under it are given the name of the star itself. I wont be surprised if dad suggests Aswathy as The Name. He had wanted Mira to be called that but it was not to be. The shortlisted names are Tarana, Antara and Kavya.

A very happy day in our family.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

congrats, Robin and Tulika, hope mum and baby and dad all doing great.
congrats to new g'parents, aunt and fly too
God bless u all with a healthy child.
take care
ust and family

marcia@joyismygoal said...

are babies often named after stars is that culture or religious or both

Unknown said...

Fantastic news!!Congratulations to R and T from Pete and Liz in the States.

Thanks for the updates and great insights.

Passionlikeachild said...

Hooray! This is beautiful news :) A child; a new blessing from above! Congratulations auntie! :)

Anonymous said...

Marcia: Not always. Some stars make good names for girls - such as Aswati, Revathi, Rohini and Karthika.
It is part religious, part cultural. Christians generally dont abide by it, though some casually check the stars the child is born under. Some even get horoscopes written but unlike Hindus, we dont use it for marital alliances. Indian Hindus generally match horoscopes to find the right spouse. It is beleived that one wont get along with the person whose star is the third before and after one's star - what we call munnaal in Malayalam.
My maid and me are munnaal but we have managed fine for a year! For women, the best star is beleived to be "makam" and for men "Pooram".

Anonymous said...

Thanks everyone for the wishes.
UST: T went through nearly 18 hours of labour. When the baby was in position, the midwife was away! So in the end they decided to make one last attempt using forceps or else go for C-sec. The forceps worked, and she had a normal delivery.

Tulika Byce said...

Thanks for the good wishes, everybody. It is a great feeling to be a dad, although i could do with fewer nappy rounds :). Tarana keeps us amused, although she does nothing special apart from sleeping and feeding. Small pleasures of parenthood.

cheers,
Robin

Anonymous said...

hi!
nice to read all your posts.
am glad you are staying sane despite all this madness. :-)
cheers on the niece and wishes to your bro and tulika.
and ashwini is always considered an auspicious star - even for boys - my dad is one.
- the other romila :-)

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