There is a photo of me at my daughter’s barahi – the sixth-day ritual that marks a child’s arrival in many East Indian households. I’m dressed in soft colours, smiling the way everyone expects a new mother to smile. The baby is wrapped in a blanket that looks far too big for her tiny body, and my family is bustling around us with the familiar rhythm of tradition: the murmured prayers, the scent of incense, the clinking of steel bowls, and the quiet pride of elders who have done this many times before.

People who look at the photos now say, “You looked so happy.” And I suppose I did.
What I have come to understand though, is that happiness is complicated, and sometimes it sits right next to fear and no one notices the difference.

That day, I went along with everything – every ritual, every instruction, every moment where I was told to sit, stand, smile, pose, and receive blessings. I moved through it all as if on autopilot. The women around me knew exactly what to do: how to prepare the offerings, how to light the deyas, how to call out the prayers in the old way, and I just followed.

No one noticed the tremble in my hands and no one saw the thousand thoughts racing behind my eyes.
I had brought a child into the world, and the weight of that truth pressed itself into my chest so firmly that I could hardly breathe. I kept telling myself, This is supposed to be joyful. This is supposed to feel sacred. This is what our mothers and grandmothers did. You’re fine. You’re fine. You’re fine.
But I wasn’t. Not really.

The barahi is meant to protect a newborn during the most vulnerable days of life. Ironically, I was the one who felt vulnerable. Everyone was celebrating new life, and I was trying to understand my own.
What kind of mother would I be?
Would I know what to do?
Would I ever feel like myself again?
Would I survive this shift everyone kept calling “a blessing” when inside it felt like free-falling?
Nobody prepares you for the moment you realise your life has permanently changed while everyone around you is still in celebration mode. It is a strange kind of loneliness – being surrounded by people yet drowning quietly inside.

To this day, it is difficult to look at the pictures and videos from that afternoon. They freeze a version of me that wasn’t entirely real. They capture the smile and not the fear behind it. They show the rituals, not the inner chaos. They preserve a moment that everyone else remembers fondly while I remember how my heart beat so loudly I thought someone might actually hear it. I still scroll past those images quickly. They pull me back to a time when I was trying so hard to appear composed that I didn’t allow myself to acknowledge how terrified I truly was. They remind me that becoming a mother is not always gentle. Sometimes it breaks you open in ways you don’t talk about until much later.

I survived that day, and I survived the weeks after. I survived the fear that felt like it was going to swallow me whole, and slowly, I began to understand that fear does not mean you are failing – it means you are human. It means the moment is big. It means your life is shifting into something you cannot yet see clearly.

That barahi photo is still hard to face, but when I do look at it, I try to honour the woman I was then. She was smiling for everyone else, but she was also holding herself together the best way she knew how, and she was slowly accepting that joy and fear don’t always arrive separately – sometimes, they walk into your life on the very same day.

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