The Prize (and Price) of Progress
A reflective poem about what is built, what is broken, and the quiet invoices hidden inside every forward step.
Progress, they say, is the overpass arching over the city.
But somewhere underneath its shadow
a sparrow once built her nest in the quiet of the reeds,
and raised her young in a crueller world.
To the builder, the span is progress.
To the sparrow, it is simply gone.
And progress writes its bill in vanished things.
For once, in a forest older than ambition,
a boy stood at the edge of belonging.
Eklavya.
He learned in absence, from a teacher carved out of wood,
poured reverence into silence until skill answered him back.
But progress, it seems, demands sacrifice.
And so came the moment shaped like a test,
sharp as a blade.
Dronacharya did not ask for effort.
He asked for the thumb.
A small thing, we might say,
until we remember that it was everything.
But to gain a place in the story,
you may be asked to erase a part of your own.
The self you sacrificed at twenty
to become someone worth knowing at thirty.
Every gain is a grief in its Sunday clothes.
Every arrival, a departure wearing a new name.
So what is progress?
Progress is the sparrow's nest beneath the overpass,
the archer's thumb beside the drawn bow.
The art of letting go,
disguised as moving forward.
Veronica Bhat
Veronica, 17, is a storyteller who believes emotions come most naturally to the human spirit. An extrovert at heart, she channels her energy into creating compelling characters, building immersive worlds, and crafting stories that resonate. She is especially drawn to exploring themes of identity, self-expression, and the quiet struggles often left unspoken. Through her writing, she aims to reflect the complexities of the human experience and the courage it takes to be seen and understood.
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