Daastan Goi – Echoes of Forgotten Voices

Daastango:
 They say history is written by the victors.
 But when I read those pages, I see more than triumphs.
 I see shadows, I hear silences.
 Sometimes I feel my own reflection there—
 not in the crowns, not in the marble,
 but in the empty spaces between the lines.

Perhaps, in some ways,
 I too am a forgotten voice.

Listen…

The Soldier’s Echo:
 “I marched for bread, not for banners.
 My feet blistered until the skin peeled,
 my throat burned with thirst,
 my stomach clawed with hunger.
 They promised me honor,
 but gave me mud for a grave.
 You call it a glorious victory.
 I call it exhaustion… unfinished.”

(
 And I remember the tired eyes of my own elders,
 working late into the night—
 victories on their shoulders,
 but no laurels on their names.

---

The Artisan’s Echo:
 “With weathered hands, I carved gods from stone.
 The chisel cut me deeper than the rock.
 Each crack in my palm is a prayer unanswered.
 People bow to the deity,
 but they do not bow to me.
 And yet… my fingerprints still cling to eternity’s cheek.”

()
 When I hold an old pen,
 I think of those hands—
 how many stories they carried,
 yet how few remembered them.

---

The Jester’s Echo:
 “They laughed at my bells,
 but inside each jest was a blade.
 I made kings tremble with laughter,
 for truth dressed in humor is sharper than steel.
 Still, when wisdom was celebrated,
 my name was erased.
 The fool remains forgotten,
 though he was the bravest of all.”

(Daastango smiles, then sighs)
 How often do we hide our truths in jokes,
 only to be remembered as jesters,
 not truth-tellers.

---

The Manuscript’s Echo:
 “I am the last page—
 torn, smudged, unread.
 The first page is framed,
 quoted, celebrated.
 But I—
 I carried the ending,
 the closure, the sigh, the silence.
 Without me,
 the tale is a wound left open.
 Why then,
 am I forgotten?”

 Perhaps I too fear being the last page—
 important, but unread.

---

The River’s Echo:
 “I have cradled children,
 and I have carried the dead.
 My song has lulled villages to sleep,
 and my rage has drowned armies.
 Empires rose on my banks,
 and empires collapsed into my depths.
 Yet no historian crowns me witness.
 Still I flow,
 still I remember.
 I am memory made water.”

()
 And I think of the Ganga in my own city—
 how she holds both ashes and offerings,
 both grief and faith.
 She remembers us,
 even when we forget ourselves.

---

(Daastango

The soldier, the artisan, the jester, the page, the river—
 each different,
 yet bound by one truth:
 they were silenced.

Shakespeare warned us the world is a stage—
 but what of those denied a line?
 Kipling told us not to lose the common touch—
 but our histories abandoned the common man.
 Tagore sang of freedom where words are fearless—
 but fear still swallows voices whole.
 Premchand wrote of the farmer and worker—
 but they remain buried under silence.
 And Poe—Poe taught us that silence is not emptiness…
 it is haunted.

What is history, if it forgets its people?
 What is memory, if it only remembers crowns?
 What is truth,
 if it dares not give space to the voiceless?

---

(Crescendo,

No more.
 We must build a Pantheon—
 not of gods, not of marble—
 but of memory.
 A temple where the soldier’s blister,
 the artisan’s chisel,
 the jester’s bell,
 the manuscript’s whisper,
 and the river’s tide
 all stand equal beside kings.

Because history without its forgotten
 is not history—
 it is silence.
 And silence…
 is the cruellest lie of all.

By Arnav Chaudhary

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