The following poem by Purvi Romdhari of Hamirpur, Himachal Pradesh won Ten Thousand Rupees in Wingword Poetry Competition 2026.
In the restless lanes of India,
where the dust remember empires
and the sky carries both prayer and protest, the youth walk
we walk, not lightly,
but with histories stitched into our skin
we are born between headlines
of growth and devastate,
of satellites touching the moon
and minors laboring in factories.
we inherit a tricolor flag
and a thousand unfinished sentences.
we are told
"be engineers of dreams''
but not of dissent.
"be doctors of bodies"
but not broken systems.
"be proud of the past''
but do not question the past
and so the voices begin
voices of comparison
marks that measure worth,
entrance exams that decide destinies
before a heart has even chosen its rhythm.
In cities like Mumbai and Delhi,
dreams rise in glass towers
while doubt sleeps in crumped rooms
beneath the unsteady glow of a sputtering bulb.
The shadows of caste remain,
older than the constitution,
older than the freedom itself,
curling quietly
into classrooms, into boardrooms,
sometimes hidden in a surname,
sometimes disguised as preference.
It lingers
in who is welcomed without question,
in who must prove, and prove again,
that they deserve space
in rooms built
by the toil of our ancestors
corruption does not always arrive
wearing arrogance.
sometimes it arrives as a advice.
sometimes it arrives as a blessing.
sometimes it arrives as desire dressed as authority.
sometimes it arrives as a smile,
calling suppression ''guidance'',
calling control ''concern'',
portraying restriction as ''realism''
and yet,
beneath this layered weight,
beneath the slow decay of self-assurance,
beneath voices that insist
we must remain manageable,
something remarkable survives.
not loud rage.
but a ruin that knows its limits.
something quieter
something patient.
something unbreakable.
Tenacity.
a generation that studies not only textbooks
but the architecture of injustice.
that memorizes formulas by day
and questions foundations by night.
that learns silence,
and discerns with clarity
when silence should yield.
we are not rising to burn cities.
we are not rising to replace one corruption
with another dressed in new slogans.
we rise,
to bear witness
to prove that worth is not inherited through surnames.
to prove that dignity does not require endorsement.
to prove that integrity cannot be bribed into shrinking.
to prove that excellence can bloom
even in soil compacted by prejudice.
we rise in libraries heavy with old pages.
in cramped rented rooms
where single bulb fights darkness stubbornly.
in notebooks filled with rewritten futures.
in quiet poems, dancing on the edge of dawn
when uncertainty screams and,
belief is thin as smoke.
we rise, invisible but certain,
choosing honesty.
when temptation sparkles in plain sight.
choosing compassion
when discord lures with faster power.
choosing persistence
when fatigue hums a sirens lullaby.
we rise not with weapons,
but with works so precise
it cannot be dismissed.
not with hatred,
but with excellence so undeniable,
it unsettles those
who tried to confine it.
they attempt to break us impassioned
with comparison,
with corruption,
with inherited hierarchy.
but they forget
that pressure does not only crush,
sometimes,
it crystallizes.
history has never belonged
to those who guarded comfort.
It has always shifted
toward those who endured long enough
to write it differently.
we are not the noise.
we are the shift beneath it.
we resist in quiet, not for spectacle.
we are proof,
that even under steady corruption,
even beneath ancestral shadows,
even when voices command
''remain small, remain grateful, remain silent''.
he human spirit bends,
but never breaks permanently.
it expands.
and one day,
when tomorrow finally opens its eyes
without fear,
without permission,
without an apology,
it will not ask
who tried to silence us.
it will stand tall,
unwavering and unashamed,
calling to the world,
because we survived and became the tomorrow,
they could not silence.
