Where My History Once Stood

They see me, and yet I vanish. Scriptural glances pass through me like wind through broken doors. In a country full of voices, I become the pause. I become the absence.

I carry a name that trembles in my throat like a child afraid to speak. Each syllable tastes of resistance, of blood washed before it dries, of rituals no god ever sanctified.

I wake with thought of survival already waiting. It sits beside me before I move, before I remember who I must become again to survive the hour.

Dalitness breathes inside me. It wraps around my ankles like chains made of memory. Not iron, but older, etched into breath, whispered through wombs, carried by mothers who taught resistance as the first prayer.

I walk streets that once prohibited me

Now forget me as I pass. I speak, and the world keeps maintain me silent, as if my voice betrays an order that no longer includes me.

And still beneath the ash, many pulses remains.

Ravidas sings. His words come through centuries like rivers through stone. Phule plants in scorched earth and summons wildflowers. Ambedkar does not bend. He builds power with sorrow and calls it law.

Babasaheb Ambedkar and the many lives he inspired, an artwork by Malvika Raj

I rise through their memory. Their fire moves in me like breath once forgotten. Their strength returns through marrow and shadow. Their joy does not erase pain, it gives it shape, gives it voice, gives it meaning.

I hold my name again. Not as apology. Not as plea. As inheritance. As thunder held in the heart. As the silence before rain.

Dalitality lives in me like a deep root weathered, ancient resistance, unmoving.

And now, I speak from that root. I walk with that fire. I gather the sorrow, lift it like a lamp, and watch it burn without fear into light.