My husband and I work as night shift nurses at Lucknow District Hospital. We’re understaffed, and our three children—the eldest in sixth grade, the second in third grade, and the youngest just four—are forced to sleep alone at home in a neighborhood near Gomti Nagar. The thought of theft worries me, so I told my husband:

—Let’s install CCTV cameras so we can keep an eye on the kids in case anything happens.

On the third night after the installation, around 11 p.m., while on duty, I turned on my phone for peace of mind. The image that appeared sent chills down my spine: a tall, thin man in a black coat quietly opened the door and entered. The door wasn’t broken—he entered as if by a familiar route, straight into the children’s bedroom.

I screamed in the middle of the hospital:
—Brother, come home immediately! There’s a stranger in the house!

My husband’s face turned pale, he stopped the injection, and rode off on his motorcycle. My eyes remained glued to the screen, my hands shaking. In the camera, the older child woke up, thinking his father had returned, and softly called out: “Dad?” The man stood silently in a dark corner.

Then he approached and reached into his jacket pocket. I screamed in vain. The youngest child burst into tears, the room echoing with sobs. The man bent down, but… didn’t touch the children.

Instead, he picked up the toys that had fallen to the floor, pulled the blanket up to the feet of all three children, his movements slow and careful. About five minutes later, he took a small pillow from his pocket and placed it neatly next to the youngest child.

At that very moment, my husband ran in and turned on the bright fluorescent light. The man turned around—a familiar face. It was Sharma ji, the elderly man living in the neighborhood who had been suffering from dementia for many years.

He muttered in broken Hindi: “Bachchon ko thand lag rahi hai… kambal odho…” (The children are cold… they must be covered with blankets).

The police arrived, and Sharma ji’s relatives also came running to apologize. It turned out he wandered around every night; this night, coincidentally, my door wasn’t locked properly, so he pushed it in.

From that day on, my husband and I locked the door tightly, installed a security latch, informed the society management, and asked the security guard to keep an eye on Sharma ji every night. But the image of that elderly man, silently bending down, pulling the blanket over my child and placing a pillow, haunted us forever—fear turned into sobs. We realized: darkness doesn’t only hide danger; Sometimes there is kindness that seems to be lost in this fast-paced life.