A mother having to confront the death of her child, her baby, to hold the child's lifeless body to her bosom and wail—there is no greater pain, no greater tragedy.
Cinema, literature, mythology are full of mothers whose grief and rage over the death of her children destroys not just empires, but Gods. A quote often misattributed to Stalin—that the death of a single man is a tragedy and that of millions a statistic—is something which many cynical people are likely to believe.
In India, we witness mothers being robbed of the power of their grief and rage. We witness their pain being made impotent, day by day, child by child.
In India, we witness how the event of a death of a child is accorded neither the acknowledgment that it is tragic, nor a banal entry in any ledger.