She could not love the “little bundle of joy”. All it did was remind her of that awful night, the pain, the cursed pain. And blood. She bled again to let this little thing breath. She had to bear the pain again for it.

"Those are my mementos, my reminders of this beautiful time, and I don’t want to lose a single one of those," says this young mother of her baby's things.

When I saw the various posts conveying outrage against the mall in Kolkata which shamed a breastfeeding mum, I couldn’t help reminiscing about my own experiences as a new breastfeeding mum.

A dirge by a mother, who has just lost her child to the erasing blackness of death. She was a mother. But she's nameless, now. A mother, no more.

The darkness has lessened a tiny bit. But it still hurts like it was yesterday. She was screaming in the hospital bed, just after waking up as soon as her anaesthesia wore off.