I reached office today just like any other day and stepped out with my colleague for our ritual early morning tea at a small shop near our office.

As we crossed a hospital on the way to the tea stall, talking about the day’s agenda, politics and news, I noticed a woman – in a nightgown, running to the entrance of the hospital. A young man carrying a baby was following her. The baby appeared to be 3 years old or so, and asleep.

She ran towards the guard of the hospital – panic and despair twisted and contorted her face. She was probably asking for directions as the guard pointed her in the direction of the door with ‘EMERGENCY’ written on top of it in big bold backlit letters. Her body language and the movement of her arms gave away the urgency. She ran and disappeared behind the door, as the young man carrying the baby in his arms followed her.

By then we had reached the small, make-shift tea stall next to the hospital. We ordered our ‘regular’ tea and sat down at the bench next to the shop facing the road to continue our discussion about the current war of words going on between the army general and the government. Our tea arrived and our discussion shifted towards a more relevant one – about planning annual leaves.

We had sat barely for 5 mins when we heard a woman scream. It had come from the direction of the hospital. Fuelled by natural curiosity, we stood up to look in the direction of the hotel.

To my horror, it was the same woman we had seen running into the hospital with a baby 5 minutes ago.

There she stood – outside the hospital’s gate – with tears running down her face and her eyes reflecting the immense loss within. She was howling uncontrollably.

The young man followed her .. slowly … still carrying the body of the child.

Between her deep- painful sobs, she was repeatedly asking the young man to hand the baby over to her. However, looking at the state she was in, the man kept refusing.

By then a small crowd had gathered around the two as a couple of helpful bystanders came forward to hold her and support her as she looked like she would collapse any minute.

I stood frozen in my place and watched the scene unfold with a feeling of distraught and absolute helplessness.

The woman continued to howl, scream and ask the man for her lifeless baby. She was sitting on the ground by then, her knees folded and her arms stretched out towards her baby.

Eventually a rickshaw arrived at the scene and the woman was picked up, with the help of the bystanders, and placed in the seat of the rickshaw.

Tears continued to run down her face. With her arms still stretched out, she continued to plead to the man to hand over the body of her baby.

Finally, the man slowly walked towards her and gently placed the limp body in her arms.

What I saw next crushed my heart into a million little pieces.

She held the baby straight up and gently placed his head on her right shoulder and picked up it’s right hand and kept it on her left shoulder. Next she wrapped herself around the baby and with the embrace complete, she wept as the rickshaw turned around and drove them away. The heart of a mother – broken, but burning for an embrace with her child.

—

Throughout the whole episode, I stood there – absolutely still. I desperately wanted to change that picture by either bringing the baby back to life or, somehow, erase the pain that the woman was feeling. I wanted to walk up to her, neutralise her pain and tell her that maybe the baby has already gone to a better place. However, unfortunately, I knew that was going to be completely useless.

I wanted to tell her to not be sad because her baby was probably finding its way back into the world through another womb. That, too, I knew would not help at that moment.

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Nobody should ever get to see a sight like what i witnessed. More importantly, no mother – or parent, should go through pain like that.

I say a prayer for the mother tonight – and hope and pray for her that she is able to overcome this sooner. I hope that life gives here enough and more happiness in the future to compensate for what it has done now. It ought to!

That’s probably the most of what I can do anyways 😐