The Republic in Rearview

    04-Jan-2026
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Randhir Thiyam
India—a vast canvas  where democracy was once painted in bold strokes.
Now the colours run, thinned by money’s rain and muscle’s wind.
The Constitution glows like a lantern in a room no one enters.
Votes..? Swipe card, swipe conscience, and swipe citizens.
Leaders rise like monsoon clouds—
dense, loud, and ready to drown dissent.
Dictatorship tiptoes in wearing democracy’s borrowed shoes.
Justice sleeps behind glass—
visible but unreachable.
Rights swing like pendulums, their arcs dictated by power’s gravity.
Every state stitched with a different thread—none matching the original design.
People cry into the wind; the wind is whisked away in private jets.
Chaos becomes a background score, ignored behind tinted windows.
Governance drifts like smoke—felt, seen but never held.
What we need is a steady hand, not a grandstand.
A nation mended with dialogue, not patched with fear.
A return to the simple blueprint: stand together, stand equal.