Bollywood actor Kalki Koechlin and theatre director Sheena Khalid have staged a new play, Belly of the Beast, which examines the difficult and often unspoken realities of motherhood. Adapted from Koechlin's 2021 book The Elephant in the Womb, written months after she gave birth, the production offers an unflinching portrait of pregnancy, labour and child-rearing, while also confronting abortion, miscarriage and postpartum depression. In India, where marriage and motherhood are widely regarded as a woman's ultimate goal and sacred duty, the play's candid focus on maternal hardship is seen as a notable departure.

The two-hour-10-minute play tells the stories of five women at different stages of motherhood and drew a standing ovation at its recent Delhi premiere, praised for balancing grim themes with pace and humour. Koechlin argues that Indian society takes mothers for granted and rarely allows women to voice the exhaustion, hormonal changes and loss of identity they experience. The play also highlights the unequal burden of domestic work: according to government data reported by the Times of India, childcare and housework keep around 69% of women in Indian cities out of the labour force, compared with just 1% of men. Koechlin urges women to let fathers and other family members share the load, and stresses that miscarriage, one of the play's most powerful themes, still carries heavy social stigma.