Resilience in the hearts of the lost,
carried across time and countless sacrifices.
Yazidis, Armenians, Bahá’ís,
Mandaeans, Sinti, Roma –
Shadows slipping through history’s fingers.
Hindus from Afghanistan, with quiet dignity,
their paths marked by longing and pain.
Uprooted to shield what is sacred,
they carry their gods across the deserts of exile.

I, too, crossed into foreign streets,
a seeker among strangers,
and found familiar laments in unfamiliar voices:
lives on the run, hearts in chains—
they showed me what I had not wanted to see.
My exile opened my eyes.
In wonder, my understanding grew:
like seeds scattered across frozen ground,
still clinging to their springtime.
In their strength, I glimpsed my own tomorrow—
how they carried languages and gods through storms,
while I was still fumbling for a name to call home.
Their fate became my mirror:
an echo that reverberates through time,
whispering:
What is lost
what is lost will not return unless we call it back.

The Hindus of the South, standing unbowed,
fight no longer with speeches,
but with roots gripping stone and dust.
The Hindus of Sri Lanka, born from flames,
forged new lives in alien soils.
But where temples once stood, only dust blows—
will their gods ever find their way home?
Or do their dreams lie buried
beneath ashes, no history dares remember?

And what of the state that calls itself just?
Secular on paper, blind at heart.
In its pursuit of equality, it erases origins,
and in doing so, tears out its own roots.
Each day, the government fails—
not through noise but through silence.

Every street in Kashmir whispers of blood,
but the state has forgotten how to listen.
How many voices must fall unheard?
How long will hope be sold
for the soft price of silence?
Many still pledge to faded flags,
trusting promises long since bartered away.
Parties trade temples for silver
and harvest silence from fields once green.
For empires demand unity:
One God, one crown, one law.
But we—
we are a forest, not a garden trimmed to order.

From the scattered, I learn:
resistance grows downward
roots threading through rock and ruin.
Even dispersed like seeds in the wind,
we carry the sacred forward—
and plant the hope
that from ashes, forests will rise again.