The calls always came in the quiet hours of the afternoon. Around two or three o’clock, the phone would ring, and it was my daughter Kavya. She had given birth just ten days earlier, and was staying at her husband’s home in Bhawanipur village.
Her voice, usually soft and playful, now came sharp with fear and exhaustion. “Mom, I’m so tired… I’m scared… please come and take me home.”
Each time, those words cut straight into me. I could hear the newborn crying in the background, the sound of tiny lungs gasping for comfort.
My own chest tightened with helplessness. But sitting beside me, my husband urged caution. “She’s newly married,” he said gently.
“Don’t interfere with the in-laws too much. It’s common for a young mother to feel overwhelmed. Let them handle it.”
I nodded, though my heart churned with worry.
Night after night, the phone rang. My daughter cried, and I wept silently with her, clutching the receiver as if it could bridge the distance between us. One morning, after another sleepless night of hearing my child beg for comfort, I could no longer bear it.
I woke my husband and said firmly, “I’m going today. If her in-laws refuse, I’ll bring her home myself.”
We left Lucknow at dawn, the road stretching thirty kilometers toward her village. I clutched my sari tight against me, praying with every bump of the car that we would find her safe.
But when we reached the red-tiled gateway of her in-laws’ home, my world collapsed. In the courtyard lay two coffins, side by side. White sheets draped over them, marigold garlands glowing bright against the pale fabric.
Incense smoke curled upward, carrying the low moan of funeral horns. My knees buckled, and I sank to the ground. My husband’s cry echoed through the yard: “Oh God… Kavya!”
One coffin held my daughter.
The other, heartbreakingly smaller, cradled the body of my newborn granddaughter. I rushed forward, hands trembling, voice breaking. “You called for me every night… and I didn’t come in time.
How could they keep this from me? How could they let you suffer alone?”
Neighbors gathered, murmuring what they had seen and heard. “She cried last night, begging to go to the district hospital,” one said.
“But the in-laws insisted she stay. They said it was still her sutak period, not yet twelve days after delivery. They gave her herbs from the midwife to stop the bleeding.
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
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