My son was eight months old when I decided that I was equipped with enough motherly skills to take him on an overseas trip. If only I knew what awaited me, I would never have stepped outside the confines of my home. My husband was going on a work-trip to Australia for three weeks, and I decided to accompany him.
The plan was to visit Sydney, Melbourne and Gold Coast within the span of those three weeks, with our first stop being Sydney. We checked into a service apartment in Paramatta, a suburb in Sydney with a concentration of Indian residents. Unlike our pre-baby days when a new city meant a hunt for interesting food joints, my first stop this time was the Indian grocery store. Australian immigration laws are strict about carrying food stuff, so I had to buy dal and rice, so that I could make khichdi in the mini pressure cooker that I had carried for 5,000 miles from my home in Singapore.
On the very first day, I packed my child, with pram, food, diaper bag and made my way to the Sydney Opera House. The ride from Paramatta to the city area takes forty-five minutes and involved multiple train changes. By the time the magnificent Sydney Harbor came into view I was already quite exhausted. Tickets for entry to the Opera House were already sold out, so we parked ourselves in the lawns opposite the Opera house to take in the stunning views of the harbor and watch children running around, tourists taking photos and lovers kissing on the park benches. There was a strong chilli breeze blowing in from the harbor, and I remember telling my husband, “ Let’s go. Its too cold. I don’t want him to fall sick.” Mother’s premonition, as they say.
By the time we reached our apartment, my son Rishaan was already sniffling and beginning to cough. Bu dinnertime, he had a slight fever and by 11PM, he started wheezing. Initially, we thought we will take him to the hospital the next morning, but with every passing minute, I could see that his breath was getting shorter. We requested the reception to call a cab for us to take us to the nearest hospital, but for an hour, not a single cab came. By Australian laws, if you have an infant, you can only board a cab which is equipped with an age-appropriate car seat–at that hour, we couldn’t find a single cab with an infant car-seat.
By 1AM, Rishaan breathing took on a strange rattling sound, as though someone were vibrating a baby rattle inside his chest. I had to take deep breaths to keep myself from getting hysterical with fear. In desperation, my husband called Emergency Services and requested for help. Within fifteen minutes, an ambulance came and three paramedics rushed into our apartment. I could tell from the look on the female paramedic’s face as she checked Rishaan’s chest, that she was concerned.
After that, everything happened is a strange blur—the paramedic wrapping Rishaan in an orange blanket as they rushed us out of the apartment, the ambulance driver barking instructions urgently on his phone, the silent streets of Sydney as the ambulance whizzed past lonely street-lights, and the flurry of activity as doctors and nurses scrambled to take us into the Children’s Emergency.
The doctor on duty immediately diagnosed Rishaan with ‘croup’, a common viral infection in Australia. He quickly administered the prescribed medicines. It took a while for the effect of the medicines to kick in, but once it did, his breathing stabilized a little. My husband lay on the couch, put Rishaan tummy down on his chest, and they both went to sleep. I was relieved when the doctors said we could go home the next morning. But since it was a viral infection, they said that they couldn’t prescribe much medication. His body would have to fight it out himself.
Thankfully, his body did fight it out. But it took him nearly four weeks to recover—the entire duration of our Australia trip went in helping him battle the virus. We cancelled our trips to Melbourne and Gold Coast and spent three weeks watching TV and playing with him inside an apartment in Sydney.
But there were good times. Every noon, when the sun was warm, I bundled him in layers of clothing and took him to a nearby park which had a rocking horse, benches and swings. He chased pigeons and cockatoos while I ran behind him trying to feed him lunch. I made friends with a Nigerian lady who lived nearby and shared with me her fascinating story of moving from Nigeria to Sydney. I also got the contact of an Indian lady who provided tiffin service of Indian food in the Paramatta area—she fed me the most delicious Punjabi home-cooked food that I have ever eaten. Once she learnt that Rishaan was sick, she started sending me khichdi and home-made kadha for him. I will never forget the kindness that lady showed me during that difficult time.
Around three days before the end of my trip when Rishaan was a little better, I started thinking, “Am I going to go back from Australia without even showing Rishaan a kangaroo? Who knows if I will ever get a chance to visit Australia again in this lifetime?” With this thought in mind, I determined that I will take him to Taronga Zoo.
Taronga Zoo is on an island near the city, so the only way to get there is by motorboats that regularly go from the harbor. It was a weekday, so my husband was unable to accompany us. With pram, child and diaper bag in tow, I changed two trains, walked to the Sydney Harbor, bought boat tickets, took the fifteen minute boat-ride to the island, waited for a bus and finally reached the Zoo. I was the ultimate picture of grit and determination—just like Tenzing Norgay as he climbed Mount Everest.
Fortunately, all the indigenous animals of Australia are sectioned off in one special area of the Zoo, so I headed straight for that zone. The koalas are as cute as I had imagined them to be. And it was exciting to see the kangaroos, emus, ostriches, alpacas and the platypus. However, in our team of two, I was the only one excited—Rishaan took it all in like a bored philosopher, detached from the pursuit of such worldly trivialities.
Happy that I had at least fulfilled my motherly duty of exposing him to the wonders of the world, I took him to the farm animal section of the zoo, that housed a pig-pen and a chicken-coop —the Farm section had a place to rest, so I thought I will feed and change him before returning to Paramatta. But the moment Rishaan saw the chickens, some invisible light switched on in his brain. He got off the pram, ran after the chickens, baby-talked with the other kids, and played in the water fountains with such unbridled joy as though he had found the very elixir of life. I had planned on leaving Taronga Zoo after lunch, but we visited with the chickens until 4PM.
I returned home to Singapore from my first overseas trip with my child with an unexpected bag of memories—a nightmarish hospital visit, the exquisite beauty of the Sydney harbor, the best kadhi chawal of my life and a curious discovery that my child has a passionate interest in chickens.
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