The Infant Who Hadn’t Landed Yet

[A short story by Mr. Srinivas Manthripragada titled ‘The Infant Who Hadn’t Landed Yet’.]

The Infant Who Hadn’t Landed Yet

A Soliloquy Between Two Worlds

The Edge Between Two Worlds

I do not know what the mortals call this moment.

Doctors call it birth. Mothers call it arrival. Fathers call it miracle.

But to me, the one who remembers, this moment is nothing less than a fall from the luminous world into the dim corridor of flesh and form.

Just a second ago—or was it a century? —I was floating in that vast field of shimmering nothingness, where colours are made not of light but of

consciousness, and music emerges not from instruments but from intention. There, names do not exist, because no separation exists. Every spirit is an echo of every other, and the Creator is not a distant deity but a warm centre of

gravity that holds all of us like a cosmic womb. And then, without warning, I felt the pull.

It was soft at first, like a ripple across my essence—a whisper that a body had been prepared, a temporary boat in the river of time. Souls around me turned to look—some with curiosity, some with sympathy, and a few with that ancient amusement that older spirits reserve for younger ones, knowing what I did not: that entry into matter is always more shocking than one expects.

“Are you sure?” one spirit asked, its voice like a bell rung in mist. Was I sure?

I do not know.

The choice felt like mine, yet also not mine. Every soul eventually descends, whether eager or hesitant, drawn by something—karma, curiosity, unfinished lessons, or the Creator’s mysterious design.

I hesitated. “Will I remember?” I asked.

“Only for a while,” another spirit replied, its glow dimming with something like tenderness. “Memory fades as matter takes shape. But the first few days—you will still see us. You will still hear the echoes. After that, the forgetting begins.”

I drifted.

I doubted.

But the pull grew stronger.

Then, in one terrifying and magnificent instant, I plunged. Darkness wrapped around me.

Warmth hugged me.

Fluid surrounded me like a cradle made of ancient memory. I had entered the womb.

For months, I slept and I listened.

And the first sound I heard was the heartbeat—a rhythmic drum, steady, ancient, hypnotic. Lub-dub. Lub-dub. Lub-dub.

A chant of safety.

A ritual of reassurance.

A reminder that although I had fallen into form, I was still being carried. I clung to that rhythm like a rope that tied me to my origin.

Little did I know how much I would miss it.

The Descent into Form

 The womb was nothing like the spirit world and yet strangely familiar: it had darkness but not emptiness; silence, but not loneliness. And always, always the heartbeat. Lub-dub. Lub-dub.

I floated, observing the world outside through mufled vibrations—the

mother’s voice, the whooshing of her blood, the rise and fall of her breath, the distant murmurs of human language I had not yet forgotten how to translate.

Every spirit knows rhythm long before it knows language. Rhythm is older than thought.

Older than species.

Older than matter.

That rhythmic world became my second home, a warm repetition of safety. Sometimes I wondered, why this body? Why these parents? Why this time?

But between those questions, I slept. Spirit memories faded like fog burned by sunrise.

Then—light.

Pressure.

Cold.

Someone pushed. Someone pulled.

Someone whispered a prayer. And suddenly—

I emerged.

I cried, not because I was scared, but because the silence of the heart-beat world had been snapped like a string pulled too tight. Air rushed through my chest. The warmth broke. The whole universe felt…dry.

I opened my eyes.

Everything was too bright, too loud, too sharp. The world of matter is never gentle on arrival.

Two faces loomed over me—one trembling with exhaustion, one trembling with awe. Mortals call them mother and father.

I looked at them with a question mark stamped on my newborn face:

“Was this truly my choice?”

“Or did the Creator choose for me?”

Mortals looked at me and thought, “Aww, he’s trying to recognize us.”

No.

Recognition is easy in the spirit world.

But here, I was searching for something deeper.

Were these two the souls I knew earlier?

Did their spirits once brush against mine in the celestial field? Did we share unfinished conversations? Unspoken promises? Or was I simply placed here by divine orchestration?

Their eyes met mine. They saw a baby.

I saw… echoes of something familiar, half-remembered, half-forgotten.

The First 30 Days

Most babies arrive into the world fully—crying, breathing, searching for milk. But I had not fully landed.

My body was here.

But my spirit?

Still halfway between dimensions.

Still holding on to the fading bridge of memory.

For the first 30 days, I remained an outsider looking in.

Day 1:

They swaddled me. I hated it.

The womb never asked me to stay still. Freedom had been my first nature.

They patted me gently—ta-ta-ta, ta-ta-ta—and something inside me softened.

Ah.

An echo of the heartbeat I once lived inside.

Not the same—but close enough to quiet my ancient panic.

Day 3:

Grandparents arrived. They made faces. Mortals think babies cannot interpret expressions. But I could see beyond their wrinkles—into their past identities.

One had once been a wandering monk.

Another had once been a gardener in a forgotten century.

They had no memory of their former forms, but their souls still shimmered with traces of who they once were.

Day 7:

A dog entered the room, sniffing me. The humans laughed. But I recognized him instantly—his spirit had once been a quiet, patient caretaker in the

celestial realm. He looked at me with familiarity, as though saying, “Ah, so you came too.”

Day 14:

Visitors came, touching my cheeks, cooing at me.

But I stared at each one with the clairvoyance only newborns possess.

Before memory dissolves, babies see not the person but the spirit wearing the person.

One visitor had the soul of an old warrior. Another carried the fatigue of several lifetimes.

One carried a wound so deep that even mortality could not hide it.

Humans read my gaze as curiosity.

But in truth, I was mapping the world, marking who had returned in what form.

Day 21:

The nights were the hardest.

The silence of the external world made me miss the rhythmic lull of the womb. That heartbeat—lub-dub, lub-dub—had been my universe.

Now they expected me to sleep in a room without the music I had known before knowing myself.

But then.. the gentle pat came. Pat.. pat.. pat..

Soft, rhythmic, predictable.

Primitive memory awakened:

This is the external imitation of the internal heartbeat. This is safety translated into touch.

This is the world trying to comfort me using the language of the womb.

Day 30:

Humans thought I was making progress—eye contact, small smiles, longer sleep.

They believed I was adjusting.

Little did they know I was slowly forgetting.

The spirit world was fading like fog on water. Faces of luminous beings drifted away.

Voices of old companions dimmed.

I was landing. Not happily. Not unwillingly. Just inevitably.

The Soliloquy: A Baby Speaks Without Words

If only mortals could hear thoughts unspoken, they would know a newborn’s cry is not just a cry; it is a question, a longing, a negotiation with existence.

“Where am I?

Why does everything feel incomplete? Why is there distance between beings?

Why must love be spoken when in my old world it simply existed? Why does safety need proof?

Why does comfort require effort?”

No human understood.

But I kept speaking in silence:

“I miss the heartbeat world.

I miss the rhythm that held me. I miss the Creator’s field of light.

I miss the place where I did not have a name, yet was fully known.”

Humans assumed I was trying to recognize faces. But I was trying to recognize destiny.

Did I choose them as parents?

Or were we drawn together by cosmic design?

Is this new life a continuation of an old unfinished story? Or a fresh script written by the Divine hand?

Sometimes at night, when mother held me close, my cheek against her chest, I heard it:

Lub-dub. Lub-dub. Lub-dub.

And for a fleeting second, I remembered home. Not this home.

The other one.

Landing at Last

On the 31st day, something changed.

I woke up and the world felt.. heavier. More solid.

Less transparent.

The spirit world felt distant, like a dream slipping away. Memory was almost gone.

Only impressions remained—like fingerprints of the divine on my newborn consciousness.

My soliloquy softened. The questions quieted.

I looked at my mother—not as a soul trying to decode destiny, but as a baby seeking warmth.

I looked at my father—not as a spirit studying past-life echoes, but as a child recognizing a protector.

The dog wagged his tail, and instead of seeing his past spirit, I saw.. a friend. I had landed.

Not because I chose to.

Not because the Creator forced me.

But because that is the nature of descent:

The river of life does not ask whether we want to reach the shore. It simply carries us there.

As I drifted into sleep, mother patted me— Ta.. ta.. ta..

An imitation of the old heartbeat.

A promise that even in this imperfect world, rhythm still exists, safety can still be created, and love—though spoken, though flawed—is still a bridge between worlds.

And for the first time since birth, I smiled. Not because I recognized a face.

But because I recognized a truth:

I am here now.

A soul wearing a body.

A spirit learning the weight of gravity.

A divine spark entering time’s long corridor.

The spirit world had let me go.

The material world had taken me in.

And thus began my life — not with certainty,

but with surrender.

A landing not forced, but inevitable.

A journey not remembered, but deeply felt.

A story not divine, yet divinely begun.