Did your son get discharged from the hospital?
Yes, sir. He got discharged this morning.

You’re here at work? Who’s with him?
He’s alone at home.

( I paused, feeling a tight knot in my chest)

How old is he?
He’s twelve.

But… how is he managing alone?
He was alone in the hospital too, sir.

Her words hit me like a punch to the gut. A boy, just twelve years old, left to battle dengue on his own in a cold hospital bed, while his mother—the one person who should’ve been by his side—was cleaning someone else's office just to keep a roof over their heads.

This is the cruel reality so many in our society face. She works every single day, from 9 AM in morning until 9PM night, for a pitiful ₹15,000 a month. Though married, her husband is absent, leaving her to carry the crushing weight of responsibility alone.

Her son desperately needed her, not just for medicine, but for comfort, for love. And yet she couldn’t be there—not because she didn’t care, but because the system demands her labor. It doesn’t pause, even when her child’s life hangs in the balance. She couldn’t afford to choose him over survival.

This story isn’t just about a mother and her sick son. It’s about a brutal system that forces people to choose between the things that should never be up for negotiation: survival or dignity, work or family, wages or love.

Those who know her situation, who watch her struggle in silence, are bound by the same cruel strings of capitalism. They want to help—desperately, even—but they, too, are helpless in a system that values performance over people, profits over compassion. They see her pain, they feel her heartbreak, but they can’t afford to send her home to be with her son. Because sending her home means someone else must take her place, and that costs money—a cost capitalism doesn’t allows it.

We talk about how diseases like dengue can kill. But in moments like these, we have to ask—does dengue really kill? Or is it capitalism that slowly steals their lives, their time, their very souls?

How many more mothers will be forced to walk away from their children in hospital beds? How many more families will be sacrificed to the never-ending grind of survival? Dengue may weaken the body, but capitalism breaks the heart.