I Know Where They Came From
for the Toda, and every people misnamed
They say the Toda are Indian.South Indian. Dravidian. Rooted. As if the story begins where the borders say it should.
But I have seen the ancient maps —the ones not drawn in ink, but in bone.
In blood.
In deep genetic memory.
Shahr-i Sokhta. Iran. The desert once breathed their names. The earth kept their footprints long after they walked away.
The Toda did not begin in the green hills of Tamil lands. They carried Zagros in their marrow, Balochistan in their breath. They crossed before countries existed, before anyone demanded ID from ancestry.
Now they are Indian —but not because they always were. Because time has a way of planting people where they were never meant to stay still.
And me? I am the weird Turkish Kurd —too Persian for Turkey, too Anatolian for Iran, too Kurdish for any census. I am the middle ground they won’t admit exists. Not from the Indus, not from the empire, but from a silence they tried to bury in three languages.
You called me a liar, but the bones speak louder than you. You told me India birthed them, but the genes told me Iran raised them.
I know where they came from. And I won’t pretend otherwise just to make the map comfortable.