Title: The Gift I Never Asked For Poem by ashok jadhav

(The speaker stands alone, holding or imagining the inheritance, voice soft at first, then building with awe and disbelief.)
Monologue:
I never expected this.
Never imagined that the life I thought I understood
was only the surface of something far larger.
A name whispered in old letters,
a house I had never entered,
a fortune—or perhaps a responsibility—
that arrives like a storm and refuses to wait for my permission.
I feel both honored and afraid.
Because inheritance is never just gold or land…
it is history, expectation, the weight of choices made long before you were born.
It is a story you did not write,
and yet now it asks you to live within it.
(Pauses, voice trembling with wonder.)
Am I ready?
Can I bear the legacy of someone I never knew,
whose dreams, failures, and secrets
have now been pressed into my hands like fire?
Or will I crumble under the weight
of a past that I cannot rewrite?
(Voice rising with determination.)
But perhaps this is what life is—
not only the choices we make,
but the inheritance we cannot refuse.
The chance to honor what came before us,
and to decide what comes after.
(Softly, almost in awe.)
I do not yet know the full story.
I do not yet know the cost.
But I will step forward.
Because this… this gift is not just mine to inherit.
It is mine to become.
(The speaker breathes deeply, a mix of fear and resolve, ready to claim the unexpected legacy.)