Title: I Was There Poem by ashok jadhav

(The speaker stands quietly, older now. Their voice is steady, but every word carries what has not healed.)
Monologue:
They ask me what it was like.
As if tragedy were an event,
something that began and ended on a date.
I tell them facts—
times, numbers, places—
because facts are easier than truth.
The truth is, history did not announce itself.
There was no warning music,
no moment when we knew the world was breaking.
One minute we were ordinary people—
arguing, laughing, planning tomorrow—
and the next, survival became the only language left.
(Pauses.)
I remember the sound most.
Not screams—those came later—
but the sudden absence of familiar noise.
As if the world inhaled
and forgot how to breathe again.
In that silence, something inside me changed forever.
They call us survivors,
as if survival were victory.
But surviving means remembering
what others were denied the chance to carry forward.
Every ordinary moment I live now
belongs partly to those who didn't.
(Voice tightens.)
I am not brave.
I did not choose endurance.
I simply stayed alive long enough
for memory to become my responsibility.
And that is the heaviest burden of all—
to walk into the future
while the past keeps calling your name.
(Softly.)
So when you study this tragedy,
when you recite it in classrooms or speeches,
remember this:
history happened to people who expected tomorrow.
People like me.
People like you.
I was there.
And I am still here—
not to be praised,
but to remember,
so forgetting never becomes the second disaster.
(The speaker stands in silence, bearing witness.)