We were the children of middle-class miracles.
Growing up with UPS batteries and bottled water,
with fathers measuring progress
in air-conditioned rooms.
We were told the country was “developing.”
No one said into what?

When the floods came,
we posted links to donation drives.
When the wheat failed,
we wrote essays on climate justice.
Our mothers boiled lentils –
Our fathers blamed the government,
and we blamed capitalism,
but none of us could name the taste
of a day without privilege.

Abroad, the professors nodded.
They praised our critical framing as excellent.
We spoke of colonial extraction,
of carbon debt,
of epistemic violence.
But when they asked about home,
we thought of electricity bills,
the cracked tap in the kitchen,
the rotten smell growing behind the fridge.

Sometimes, in dreams,
we walk through flooded fields
wearing our foreign degrees like life jackets.
We wake up fluent in despair,
hungry in two languages.

Yet, we hope:
as if hope were edible,
as if the next monsoon might bring
something other than an apology.