An Aspirant's Lament — An Unknown Melody

By Sneha Manna

She wakes up before the sun,

chasing a future that sometimes feel like a cage, 

pages filled with formulas and calculations, 

her hands tremble, her vision blurs, 

but there is no excuse for exhaustion.

According to them, 

she is not a daughter, not a soul,

she is a rank, a score, a disappointment. 

A machine fed with equations and facts,  

only instructed to run, to race,

but never to breathe.

"Marks. Just marks."

parents' voices

scrape against her ribs,

burrowing deep into the marrow of her being.

She is a sum of digits,

never enough, never worthy,

forever trapped in the cycle of competition. 

She watches her friends fade into the distance. 

Laughter is now just an unknown melody.

Fun is a luxury, joy an inconvenience. 

"Do you want success or do you want to waste your life?"

Yet they never ask if she wants to live at all. 

Each failure carves a wound in her heart, 

Unseen, slow and ruining. 

She places her dreams at the altar of sacrifice,

but the gods of ambition remain silent.

A ninety is greeted with a frown,

a ninety five with a sigh,

a ninety nine with, "Why not a hundred?"

She has been always compared,

their words feel sharper than the knives. 

"Look at their daughters"

"Look at everyone but yourself."

And she obeys, 

She sees everyone flying,

while she sees herself chained, 

crawling, struggling with no visible way of escape. 

She has already forgotten what warmth feels like,

numbness feels like safer option. 

Tears are a waste of time, 

regret is her old best friend. 

And then,

the results arrive.

She has fought, bled, burned herself hollow,

but the gates do not open.

The government system crumbles in her hands,

merit swallowed whole by the jaws of reservation,

by the corruption of chance. 

Her name is missing from the list,

but her pain is engraved into her bones.

All those sleepless nights,

all those silent cries into the pillow,

all those sacrifices, 

just for nothing? 

She stares at the rejection,

but it is not a surprise.

She has always been second to someone,

always reaching for a sky

that shifts further away with every step she takes.

And her parents? 

they do not hold her.

They do not tell her it will be okay.

They just ask, "What now?"

As if she is a broken investment,

not a broken child.

Thus, to the ones like her, 

to the ones who cry in the darkness,

who break but do not shatter,

who bend but refuse to bow. 

You are more than your marks.

You are more than their expectations.

You are more than a number.

Let the wounds heal,

let the scars tell stories,

let the failures be lessons,

not verdicts.

One day, the world will see you,

not for the grades you earned,

but for the battles you fought,

the storms you survived,

and the fire that refused to die.

And "Dear parents", 

do not love us only when we succeed.

Do not crush us beneath your expectations

and call it care.

Do not mold us into machines

and wonder why we forget how to feel.

Do not build our future on the ruins of our soul.

Let us breathe.

Let us dream.

Let us be.

For a child should not have to beg

for the right to be human.

By Sneha Manna