Author- Hansika Singh
(A monologue by a Terracotta pot)
I sit quietly in this cold, polished office—perched on a marble shelf, beside fancy sculptures and air-conditioned silence.
Now I’m a “Statement piece” that speaks for a man’s gilded life. I was sold for thousands, wrapped in a sheet of bubble wrap, stripped of my story.
I miss home. I held cool water under the sun in a dusty village courtyard. Laughter echoed around me. A child splashed, a mother poured. I belonged.
This generation, they only chase shine and big names. They want spotless perfections carved from machines but what about the hands that shaped us with calloused fingers? What about the cracks that tell stories and the uneven edges that know no other perfection than the beauty of their own? What about the silent pride of a potter who never signed his name?
But truly, I’m just baked earth—shaped by weathered hands, fired by a village kiln. Why am I here, so far from home, treated like treasure, when the hands that made me go hungry?
Their names never leave the villages but their art? It is slowly fading away.
Funny thing is, the people who truly admire me now, come from oceans away. Foreigners run fingers across my curves with reverence. They ask about my history, my maker, my meaning. While my own people walk past me in malls, calling me “too old-fashioned” for modern living.
I am just baked earth. But within me is centuries of fire, patience, and soul.
Not a trend. Not an aesthetic. A legacy.
So I sit here… quiet, pretty, out of place.
Wishing someone would look past the price tag.