She had lost her smile. But that was last on the long list of things she had lost in the course of three months, after the arrival of the baby. She had lost her eagerness for her morning cup of tea, her day-dreaming sessions and her musical hours when she listened to her favorite pieces in the twilight hour and worse still she had lost her general enthusiasm for life.

She had reported back to work and the demands of her job played a tug-of war game with her motherhood requirements. Every morning she would wake up groggy-eyed, from lack of proper sleep, whisk a quick breakfast of cereals and fruits or an omelet or any such quick-to-make recipe, sterilize the feeding bottles by boiling, fill them with milk in measured quantities, prepare and pack the lunch boxes, arrange the diapers and baby clothes in a bag, give the baby a gentle bath, dress her up for the day with diapers in place all powdered and dry, take a bath herself and pull on a salwaar-kameez that fitted her increased girth and get set to leave for work, baby in tow, dropping her off at the neighborhood day-care centre just before boarding an auto-rickshaw to take her to the nearest railway station.

Her husband would help by co-operating, not uttering a word of complaint for the dry tasteless cereals for breakfast she dished out nowadays, when he was used to elaborate south-indian snacks of Idli-dosa-sambar and chutney prior to the arrival of the baby. He would make his presence felt minimally, sometimes patting the baby to sleep when she woke up while the mother was cooking or bathing. Then he would say goodbye to her and slip out of the house hurriedly, almost always just as the Bai came in for her morning chores. His wife would leave an hour later after the Bai had finished her work and the house was put in order.

She worked as a teacher in a reputed public school. She taught English to the students of class seven and upwards. Her students had adored her humor laced teaching sessions. She would caricature the Shakespearean characters in various interesting shades and take away the pains of deciphering the enigmatic Shakespearean language with her unusual enthusiasm for drama in her speech. But off-late she had been showing less creativity and snapping at her students for trivial reasons. She now taught them the powerful poetry in their books in a dry, sleepy manner as if all she cared for was to finish it off for the sake of completing the required portion.

In the evenings, initially she used to fight with her husband when he trudged in late but recently she had stopped being difficult. She just ignored him, acknowledging his presence only at dinner time and sharing a few monologues with him about her entire day’s happenings. Then she would curl up in bed with the baby, often turning her back on her husband, shedding a few tears, feeling overwhelmed, knowing that in the middle of the night she would be awakened from her fitful sleep by the cries of the baby. In the morning she would wake up groggy-eyed to repeat her routine but the first thing she would do was pick up those strands of hair lying on her pillow, feeling no sense of loss at all for the manner in which her crowning glory, her thick luxurious hair was being reduced to a lusterless, dry mass of alarmingly thin volume. She had lost her zest for life.

One day, at school she slapped a student for shrugging her shoulders in reply to one of her queries. Then she ran out of the class-room and cried like a baby in the staff-room much to the dismay of the rest of her colleagues. Often times in the night she would cry herself to sleep silently and sometimes when her husband asked gently for the reasons she would snap back at him calling him an insensitive man who did not care a dime for her well-being. She hardly smiled anymore.

She was standing in the bathroom, tears streaming down her cheeks, in her blue nighty, muttering something under her breath as she washed hands fervently. Out, damned spot! out - That’s what she was saying over and over again, hissing it out between clenched teeth. The basin was awash with red blood and she stood there, her hair hanging loose, smudges of kohl under her eyes and on the cheeks, wondering whose blood was it on her hands. She tip-toed to the bedroom, saw her husband sleeping peacefully on one side of the bed and then she saw it- blood trickling down from the baby’s cot, drop by drop, numbing her with shock. She walked to the side of the cot to take a better look and then she screamed and screamed till she felt her lungs bursting out of her chest….

Her husband jumped up from his sleep only to see her holding her baby to her bosom screaming while the baby too, frightened out of her wits, was crying out aloud. She just kept rocking back and forth repeating over and over again that she had murdered her baby.

The doctors diagnosed it as Post partum depression. They gave her tranquilizers to calm her for the moment. When she woke up from sleep she was calmer and wouldn’t let the baby out of her sight. She was discharged with some anti-depressant pills, advise to exercise and take it easy.

Three weeks into the treatment she was her usual normal self. She was ready to take decisions and the first major one she made was to resign from her job. She had accepted that the dream was a symbolic message for her in so many ways. It had opened her eyes to show her how she was murdering her own motherhood by sheer negligence and why she was sinking into the abyss called depression because she tried to sideline her soul’s calling.Of course doctors had mentioned hormonal upheaval as the cause for her depression but she was determined to find her own reasons. She had made up her mind to re-connect to her soul’s longing and for her at this moment, motherhood beckoned.