The following poem by Ricky Kmenlang Mawlong from Shillong, Meghalaya won Ten Thousand Rupees in Wingword Poetry Competition 2026.
Clouds press low.
The Sumo surges.
Hills roll past like whispered prayers.
Metal sings against the road,
And every face is a page in the same unwritten gospel.
-All our stories are chapters in the same book, even if we never read them aloud.
Beside me -
two voices blaze with the need for the altar,
for shepherds who rise before dawn
and keep their watch until night’s last candle dies.
-Some tend the fire so the rest of us never freeze.
Ahead-
a glow from a small screen
spills Scripture into the dark like oil into a lamp.
The words do not flicker.
They burn.
-Truth needs no stage; it finds its own audience.
A young man, eyes anchored,
lets the swell of worship songs
drag his soul into waters without shore.
-Sometimes the safest place to drown is in grace.
Others -
silent as cloistered stone,
yet storming the heavens in the chambers of the heart.
-Silence can shout louder than bells.
At the helm -
a rosary sways with each curve,
holy eyes framed in worn plastic
blessing every mile,
every turn,
every soul.
-Even the road obeys when the beads keep count.
And me -
brother by vow,
passenger by grace,
measuring distance in the hammer of my pulse,
not the ticks of a speedometer.
-Faith travels faster than wheels.
For here,
in this jolting ark of steel and breath,
the wind is One.
It fills every lung.
It flings every sail toward the same invisible shore -
where strangers cannot exist.
-One current. One destination. Many names for Home.