Nightfall and Anencephaly

There's something about the night and it's comfort and it's cold warmth that brings out kindness in the hardest of hearts, a sense of identity with the other creatures that roam the dark. Approaching midnight, the faces I pass on the road, are not filled with fear, malicious intent or anger. They are smiling at me. I am hungry, the body is asking for sustenance. After rolling on through many a side street, I chance on a push cart, Charlie and the meat factory, God's providence for the hungry angels of the night. "Kya khaaoge bhaiyya?". Feed me brother, and I shall remember the good deed done. Thank you.
Siddharta seems happy. He's calmer than I had known him to be.

On another night years back, a baby is born, in the manner most babies are, except this one isn't like the others. It doesn't cry like the others, and it's not a sight for the weaker of hearts. Your eyes are drawn and held, you can only look on in helplessness. And what is holding your eyes as if fastened tight with rivets? It is the baby's brain, or rather where the brain should have been. It was simply not there, nor was the skull, the scalp, everything you would associate with a normal newborn. It was as if some unseen in-utero force scythed obliquely along a line from forehead to the back of the head.

And I thought it was dead, it couldn't possibly be alive, could it? Not without a brain. Sorry, wrong answer. Wasn't crying, wasn't moving, so how alive? Under the lights, standing by it's side, and gathering my guts from off the floor, I touched it, the void where the brain was meant to be. A spasmodic, spine-chilling jerk of the lower limbs ripped through what I thought was not alive. Stunned into insensibility, I staggered back. The baby remained alive for an hour afterward. Requiescat in pace. The mother was eighteen. Peace be with her.