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Another Girl Joins The Party! Melvin Durai Melvin Durai is an Indiana-based writer and humorist. Born in Tamil Nadu, India, he grew up in Zambia and moved to the U.S. in the early 1980s. In 1995, while working as a reporter for a daily newspaper in Chambersburg, Pa., he began writing a regular humor column. His weekly column now appears in several newspapers and on a number of Web sites. He also writes a twice-monthly column on Indian and Indian-American issues. He is a diehard fan of the National Football League and also likes to run, lift weights and play soccer, tennis and pool. An award-winning feature writer and aspiring novelist, he plans to publish a collection of his best columns. You can write to him at comments@melvindurai.com To read his older columns, go to http://www.melvindurai.com Visit http://www.sawf.org/humour to read Melvin's past columns on SAWF.

Our baby wasn't due for another three weeks, but in the wee hours of Feb. 18, she started banging on the door. "Let me out! Let me out! It's dark in here and I can't find any toys. I want to be in a Toys 'R' Us, not a uterus."

My wife, Malathi, felt intense pain and started howling, "Amma! Amma! Amma!" which means "Mother! Mother! Mother!" in our native tongue, Tamil. Her screams were so loud, I was certain her mother could hear her -- all the way in India.

If you've never seen a woman in labor, you can't fully appreciate what mothers go through. Few men ever endure such pain, not even those who've had the misfortune of tangling, accidentally, with their zippers.

I rushed Malathi to the hospital, along with our toddler, Lekha, who, for the first time in her life, was not the loudest person in the car.

A doctor gave Malathi some pain treatment and she calmed down enough to give me a look of determination, a look that said, "I think I'm going to be alright, sweetie. But don't you ever sleep near me again!" I gave her a look that said, "I'm glad you're feeling better, sweetie. Just remember: I'm not the one who wore lingerie to bed."

An hour or so later, a doctor and nurse began urging Malathi to "push, push, push" and I quickly got out of the way, in case she decided to push me.

It didn't take long for the baby to emerge, a truly amazing sight, like nothing I'd witnessed before. Our first child came through a caesarean section, while this one popped out of a totally different section. Even as a sports fan, I hadn't seen anything this dramatic. It was like my favorite soccer player had scored in the last minute of the championship game, with the television announcer shouting, "It's a giiiirrrrllll!"

We named her Divya Tarika Durai and introduced the wrinkly newborn to big sister Lekha, who looked her over with a puzzled expression that seemed to say, "Who is this strange creature and does it bite?"

With Divya's arrival, the females have officially taken over my household, which means I'll soon have to watch episodes of "The View" and listen to debates about which football player has the cutest butt.

Am I disappointed I don't have a son? Not in the least. Girls can do anything boys can, except in a few narrow fields, such as the field of horizontal peeing.

I will tell my daughters about all the women I admire, women who've reached the top of their fields such as journalist Christiane Amanpour, novelist Jhumpa Lahiri and talk show host Oprah Winfrey. I will tell them they can be just as successful, as long as they set high goals, work extremely hard and follow all of Daddy's rules.

I will give them the rules when they're a little older, rules such as these:

---"No wearing clothes that look like they've been through a paper shredder. If it shows too much skin, it's going in the trash bin."

---"No dating boys until you're 30. And the same applies to girls!"

---"No smoking whatsoever. If I see smoke coming out of your mouth, it had better be because of your mother's curry."

---"No foul language, unless you've decided to become a professional wrestler, in which case I'll be using a lot of foul language, too."

For an email subscription to Melvin's regular weekly columns (not the ones that appear here), go to www.MelvinDurai.com

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