Years passed, but Arhan's drawings never faded. They hung silently in a small town museum, unknown to most — until one day, a journalist named Meera stumbled upon them.
She wasn't an art critic or historian. She was searching for truth — about corruption, injustice, and the quiet cruelty of the present. But when she saw Arhan's sketches — those haunting faces with hollow eyes — something inside her broke.
They didn't just look drawn. They looked alive.
Each face seemed to whisper stories Meera couldn't ignore. A mother dying of hunger. A boy crushed under war. A poet silenced by power. She touched one sketch, and for a brief second, she heard a faint whisper —
> "We still wait to be heard."
Meera pulled her hand back, trembling. The same chill Arhan once felt ran through her veins. That night, she couldn't sleep. The silence of the forgotten echoed through her mind — not from history this time, but from the present.
The next morning, Meera wrote an article titled "The Forgotten Still Cry." It wasn't about Arhan. It was about the poor, the nameless, the oppressed — people who still suffered while the world turned away. Her words burned through the nation like wildfire.
People started asking:
> "Who will remember the unheard?"
Then someone found the story behind the sketches — how Arhan vanished in the ruins, how his last words were, "You have heard us."
The world began to listen.
---
Schools displayed his art.
Students wept in silence.
Leaders quoted his name, pretending to understand.
But in truth — only a few really felt what he had drawn.
Among them was a boy named Ishan, just sixteen — quiet, curious, and carrying a sketchbook like Arhan once did. When he visited the museum, he felt the same pull, the same invisible sorrow whispering through the air.
He stood before the sketch of the girl with the broken bangles — the one Arhan had drawn with trembling hands — and said softly,
> "I see you."
The air grew still. The lights flickered.
For a moment, he saw her smile.
From that day, Ishan began sketching what he saw around him — the hungry children, the broken workers, the old forgotten soldiers. His drawings were raw, alive, painful. And again, people began to feel.
It was as if the spirit of history had chosen him next.
---
One night, as Ishan finished a sketch, he looked at Arhan's old book — the one preserved in glass in the museum.
It was open now, though no one had touched it. On the final blank page, a new line had appeared — glowing faintly in golden ink:
> "Every time someone listens, the silence fades a little."
Ishan smiled.
He finally understood — Arhan didn't just draw the dead; he gave them life through remembrance.
The echoes beneath the dust would never be silent again.
Because as long as someone was willing to listen, history would keep breathing — through pencils, through words, through the hearts that refuse to forget.
---
Moral:
The forgotten never truly die.
They live in every act of remembrance, every voice that rises for truth, every heart that dares to listen to silence.