Chandigarh, Oct 9: The first time Maya saw a baby after it had happened, she froze. The tiny being in her friend’s arms, soft and wailing, was supposed to be adorable, innocent—something she had always adored. Yet all she felt was a hollow dread gnawing at her chest. It was as if the world had turned upside down, and she was teetering on the edge of a precipice she could not cross.
Maya had always loved children. She had grown up in a house filled with laughter, with cousins and neighborhood kids forever tumbling into her room, dragging her into games and secrets. She had been the one everyone trusted to babysit, the aunt who could make a baby giggle in seconds. She had thought, once upon a time, that nothing could ever shake her love for the little ones.
Then it happened.
She did not speak of it, not to her friends, not even to herself. A sudden, sharp loss had shadowed her life—something that had torn away the very essence of what she believed motherhood, life, and hope were. The details were private, too painful, too jagged to put into words. But the impact was absolute. Where there had once been warmth, now there was fog—dense, suffocating, opaque.
Months passed, and Maya began noticing the world changing around her. Pregnant women in the market, the sound of a baby crying from an apartment below, a casual conversation about a colleague expecting a child—each one sent a ripple of panic through her body. She could not explain why, but the world of pregnancy, of cradles and lullabies, had become a place she feared.
Her apartment, once a haven, now felt like a cage. She avoided friends with children, declined invitations to baby showers, even stepped out of stores if she saw diapers stacked near the checkout. The irony was cruel—she had spent her entire life surrounded by children, and now the very sight of them made her heart race.
One rainy evening, Maya found herself wandering aimlessly through the city. Mist hung low over the streets, wrapping the streetlights in halos. She paused at a park where she used to play as a child, her gaze catching on the swings, empty but moving in the wind. Somewhere between memory and reality, she saw a mother rocking a stroller. The baby’s face was hidden under a soft blanket, but the muffled cooing reached her ears.
She wanted to turn and run. She wanted to disappear into the fog that mirrored the one in her mind. But something—a flicker, faint and trembling—made her stop. She remembered the sound of her niece laughing, the way her cousin’s newborn had grabbed her finger with a tiny, trusting hand. A longing surged alongside her fear, painful and confusing.
Maya sat on the damp bench, letting the fog curl around her like a shroud. Her chest tightened with memories of love and joy, but also with the shadow of loss that had left her so unsteady. She whispered to herself, “I’m not ready. I can’t.” Yet even as she said it, she felt the faintest pulse of hope.
She realized that fear and love were no longer opposites—they were intertwined, wrapped tightly in the same fragile fabric of her heart. The cradle of fog she had built around herself was not just protection; it was a prison. And though stepping out of it seemed impossible, she sensed that one day, when the fog thinned, she might find herself able to return to the world she once adored.
For now, all she could do was breathe, let the rain soak her hair, and listen to the faint coos and cries around her—acknowledging the fear, honoring the grief, but letting the faint echo of love remain.
The city, shrouded in mist, moved on around her. Children’s laughter echoed somewhere distant, and for the first time in months, Maya allowed herself to imagine that perhaps one day, she could walk among it again.
In the cradle of fog, she was both lost and waiting—waiting for the courage to meet the world, to face motherhood in whatever form it might take, and to remember the love she had once carried so freely.
