The World I Carry Within
- V Durgadevi
There is a world I carry within me,
quiet as an unfinished song,
not measured by the height of its towers
but by the space it leaves
for every living thing to breathe.
I see roads disappearing beneath avenues of trees,
their branches meeting overhead like old friends.
The air is clean, the waters are clear,
and the simple necessities of life
reach every doorstep—
water, shelter, light, dignity—
without leaving anyone at the margins.
People know the names of those who live beside them.
A neighbour’s sorrow finds a door to enter;
a celebration finds a hundred hands to share it.
Homes make room for one another,
children grow surrounded by many caring hearts,
and the elderly remain within the warmth of their communities.
No one is forgotten simply because they have grown old,
or because they began life with less.
At dusk, families wander through green spaces
where children run ahead beneath the trees,
and sometimes towards shores
where clear waters meet the fading light.
Nature is not a place we escape to;
it is woven into the places we call home.
We have learned to walk gently upon the earth,
knowing that what we leave behind
belongs to those who come after us.
Here, progress has learned humility.
Factories rise, machines grow wiser,
and human imagination reaches beyond yesterday,
yet rivers remain clear, forests remain standing,
and the sea is not asked to carry
the waste of our ambitions.
Technology serves humanity
without teaching humanity to forget itself;
knowledge grows, but wisdom grows with it.
And the world is governed not by the hunger for power
but by the responsibility to serve.
Politics is made for people,
never by making people a means to power.
The ordinary voice is heard beyond the moment of a vote,
and the necessities of life are not privileges
distributed according to influence.
What belongs to everyone
reaches everyone.
In this world, education begins
without asking what a family can afford.
Every child enters through an open door,
and learning meets the needs of every mind.
Talent needs no powerful name to announce it.
On every field, every stage, every ground,
ability is allowed to speak for itself,
unhindered by wealth, influence, or recommendation.
Work, too, has regained its dignity.
Every honest profession that sustains our lives
receives its rightful earnings and respect—
from the hands that keep our streets clean
to the hands that weigh the fate of nations.
Different work may carry different responsibility,
but no work diminishes the worth
of the person who performs it.
When illness arrives,
hope does not first ask for money.
The finest hands, the finest knowledge,
the finest care belong to whoever needs them.
No family stands beside a hospital bed
wondering what a human life is worth in currency.
No one goes to sleep with hunger beside them;
no child learns to call an empty plate
a part of destiny.
I see girls and women walking freely,
without carrying the invisible burden of fear.
They go where they wish, when they wish,
without their freedom being weighed
against wealth, clothing, reputation, or chastity.
At every workplace, their minds and hands
are valued for what they create,
never judged by the gender they were born with.
Their freedom is not a favour granted by society;
it is simply theirs.
And the law stands the same before everyone.
It does not bow before wealth or influence,
nor become distant from those with little.
Justice is not a door that opens more easily
for the powerful.
The law belongs to every person
because dignity belongs to every person.
Perhaps the deepest faith in this world
is not measured by the volume of prayer,
or by a thousand voices calling upon a thousand names,
but by the quiet act of one human being
choosing kindness when no one is watching.
Faith may take many forms;
but wherever compassion lives,
humanity has found its truest prayer.
There are no wars waiting beyond the horizon,
no young lives sent into battle
to inherit the unfinished hatred of others.
The weapons have fallen silent,
and humanity has understood
that peace is more than the absence of war—
it is the courage to recognise another life
as precious as our own.
This is the world I carry within me.
Not a perfect world.
Not a world without sorrow, loss, or change.
But a world where dignity is ordinary,
where freedom belongs to everyone,
where opportunity is not inherited,
where justice has no price,
where no one is left hungry or forgotten,
and where progress never forgets
the life that sustains it.
Perhaps it exists only in my mind.
But every world we have ever built
was once invisible.
It began as a thought
someone refused to let disappear.
Then a dream
someone dared to share.
Then a hand
that reached for another.
And perhaps that is how this world, too,
will one day begin—
not with a tower rising into the sky,
and a thousand hearts
choosing to rise with it.
(வ துர்காதேவி, பட்டதாரி ஆசிரியர், அரசு உயர்நிலை பள்ளி-நெசல், திருவண்ணாமலை)