I am going to do something different with this one. I am going to tell you that I do not have a good answer, because I think the honest “I do not know” is worth more than a confident lie.

I have not been able to comprehend how maternity leave really changes the focus on a career. I genuinely do not know whether the six months of leave we get in India is a boon or a bane.

Six months protects the mother and the child, and I am glad the law exists. And six months is also long enough for teams to reorganise, for projects to move on, and for momentum to shift. Both of those things are true at once, and anyone who gives you a clean one-line answer is skipping one of them.

So instead of an answer, an invitation. If you have lived this, the leave, the return, what it did or did not do to your career, tell me about it through the ask box. This is the question I most want to build a real answer to, and I cannot build it alone.