Lost and Found - By Minha Shamsudheen

Written By: Minha Shamsudheen

Category: Essay

Competition: Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026

In the Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026, Minha Shamsudheen presents a compelling essay titled "Lost and Found." This reflective piece delves into the intricacies of loss, both tangible and intangible, through the metaphor of a lost and found box. The essay belongs to the essay category and explores themes that resonate universally. Shamsudheen's work invites readers to contemplate the nature of loss and the enduring human spirit that persists in the face of it.

About the Work

"Lost and Found" by Minha Shamsudheen is an evocative exploration of the emotions tied to lost objects and the broader concept of loss in human life. The essay weaves together vivid imagery and poignant reflections to illustrate how ordinary items can encapsulate profound stories and memories. Shamsudheen captures the essence of human forgetfulness and resilience, offering a narrative that is both introspective and hopeful.

Lost and Found

Original Submission by Minha Shamsudheen

HASHTAG KALAKAR ENTRY: Essay

Lost and Found

-Minha Shamsudheen

The first thing I noticed about the lost and found box was how permanent it seemed.

It sat beneath the office window gathering dust and forgotten possessions with equal patience, accumulating the small casualties of ordinary life. A lone glove. A cracked water bottle. A notebook swollen by rainwater, its pages warped and brittle. A house key attached to a faded ribbon. None of these objects were particularly remarkable. Yet together they formed a peculiar archive of human forgetfulness, a museum curated entirely by accident. Every item had once belonged to someone. Every item had once been searched for. Every item carried the faint outline of a story.

There is something strangely unsettling about lost things.

Not because of what they are, but because of what they suggest. A misplaced pencil case is rarely just a pencil case. It is frantic hands rifling through a backpack before class begins. It is retraced footsteps across hallways. It is the brief and irrational panic that accompanies the realization that something once secure has slipped beyond our reach. The objects themselves are ordinary. The emotions attached to them are not.

Perhaps that is why the lost and found box feels larger than it truly is. For the truth is that human beings spend much of their lives losing things.

At first, the losses are small. Toys abandoned beneath beds. Favourite sweaters outgrown before we are ready to part with them. Phone numbers no longer memorized because they no longer need to be. These disappearances are minor enough to be absorbed without much thought. Yet over time, the nature of our losses changes. They become heavier, more difficult to replace, more resistant to recovery.

Childhood, for instance, leaves quietly.

There is no ceremony marking its departure. No official announcement. One day, summer holidays stretch endlessly before us, vast and golden and seemingly eternal.

The next, they have condensed into a handful of photographs buried somewhere within a phone gallery. The treehouses vanish. The cartoons end. The games we once treated with deadly seriousness become faintly embarrassing memories. Somewhere along the way, we stop looking for magic in ordinary places. We stop believing that every unanswered question possesses an answer waiting patiently to be discovered.

And then there are the losses that arrive through distance.

Friendships that once felt permanent gradually dissolve beneath unanswered messages and diverging paths. Familiar faces become occasional names on social media feeds. Conversations that once filled entire afternoons are reduced to birthday wishes typed hurriedly once a year. No arguments. No dramatic endings. Simply the slow erosion of proximity, carrying people away from one another grain by grain.

The most painful losses, however, are not friendships or objects or even childhood itself. They are people.

Every life eventually becomes a collection of traces. A jacket still hanging behind a bedroom door. A voicemail preserved because deleting it feels impossible. A favourite chair left untouched for months. Human beings disappear, yet evidence of them remains scattered throughout the world with remarkable stubbornness. Fingerprints linger on glass. Handwriting survives on old shopping lists. Books remain folded at favourite chapters. Entire lives reduce themselves to fragments, and somehow those fragments become precious.

Perhaps this is why grief feels so strange.

It is not merely the absence of a person. It is the presence of everything they have left behind.

The world itself bears witness to this phenomenon. Walk through any city and you will find monuments to loss. Memorial walls crowded with names. Photographs preserved beneath glass. Flowers left where tragedies occurred. Entire nations carrying scars carved by wars, violence, and divisions that began long before the current generation was born. History, when viewed closely, resembles humanity's own vast and overflowing lost and found box. It contains stolen futures, interrupted dreams, abandoned homes, forgotten languages, and countless people who never returned.

Yet despite all of this, humanity possesses an extraordinary habit.

We keep searching.

We search for loved ones after disasters. We search for peace after conflict. We search for understanding after hatred has divided us. Again and again, despite overwhelming evidence of loss, people continue reaching toward one another. The headlines often focus upon what has been destroyed, but beneath them exists another story, quieter and far less visible. It is found in volunteers carrying supplies through floodwaters, teachers rebuilding classrooms after devastation, neighbours sharing food during difficult times, strangers offering comfort where none is expected.

Loss may be inevitable.

But so, it seems, is resilience.

For every friendship that ends, another begins. For every dream abandoned, a new one gradually takes shape. For every chapter of life that closes, another opens, uncertain and unfamiliar and full of possibility. Human beings are remarkable not because they avoid loss, but because they continue moving forward despite it.

The lost and found box remains beneath the office window.

Tomorrow another object will appear inside it. A misplaced ID card. A forgotten umbrella. A water bottle left behind after practice. Someone will search frantically for it. Someone may eventually reclaim it. Someone else may not.

And perhaps that is why the box continues to fascinate me.

Not because of what it contains, but because of what it promises.

Every object inside exists because someone once believed it was gone forever. Yet there it remains, waiting patiently beneath fluorescent lights, proof that not everything lost remains lost. In a world so often defined by absence, there is something comforting about that. The possibility, however small, that beyond our searching and our grief, certain things are still waiting to be found.

About the Competition

The Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026 by Hashtag Kalakar is a prestigious platform celebrating the written word. It invites participants worldwide to explore diverse themes through poetry, essays, short stories, and creative writing. The competition aims to foster creativity and provide a stage for writers to share their unique voices and perspectives with a global audience.

We extend our gratitude to Minha Shamsudheen for her thought-provoking submission, "Lost and Found," in the Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026. Her essay beautifully captures the complexity of loss and the enduring hope that defines the human experience. Thank you, Minha, for sharing your insights with us.

About Hashtag Kalakar

Hashtag Kalakar is a creative platform dedicated to providing artists, writers, singers and other creative talents with opportunities to showcase their work and reach wider audiences through competitions, features and creative initiatives.