The Debt Of Education – Delhi Poetry Slam

The Debt Of Education

By Vaishavi Oza 

 

 

They say knowledge is free,
but they forget the locks on its doors,
the weight of numbers that crush a name,
the silent battles waged in shadows, where a mind that burns too bright
is dimmed by something as simple,
as ruthless,
as the absence of money.
Dreams do not shatter in a single night—
they erode, bit by bit,
with every fee unpaid,
with every book left untouched,
with every lesson heard from the wrong side of a closed door.
Not for lack of will,
not for lack of fire,
but because the price of a seat in that
room
is written in a currency not everyone holds.
They say, try harder.
As if effort alone could rewrite
balance sheets,
as if hunger, debt, and sleepless nights
could be buried beneath ambition,
as if talent could erase the cost
etched into every borrowed notebook,
every sacrificed meal,
every silent resignation.
Who decides the worth of a mind?
Who dares to put a price on potential?
Who turns away the ones who
could build, could heal, could lead —
if only given the chance to step through that door?
But a mind that seeks will find,
a dream denied will rise again,
and what was once out of reach
will be reclaimed—
not by wealth,
but by a fire too fierce to be quenched .
For knowledge was never meant to be a privilege,
and education was never meant to be a debt.


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