His Highness, Raja Raita Singh

There once ruled a king —

not because he deserved to,

but because he convinced the people

that no one else did.

Not crowned by conquest,

but by a plague of paranoia

that dressed itself in patriotism.

His empire was a house of cards,

plastered in myth.

They called him Raja Raita Singh,

for wherever he walked,

reason spoiled.

Logic soured.

Truth curdled,

and spilled in directions

no map could follow.

He was, after all,

true to his name.

He spoke of fallen empires

and feeble rulers before him —

men and women,

who in his revisionist tales,

weren’t builders of bridges

but beggars to foreign gods.

Who sold sovereignty

for treaties inked in betrayal,

signed in the blood

of forgotten citizens.

He swore he’d never be them.

He would guard the gates.

Burn the bridges.

Silence the messengers.

Even cage the clouds

if they dared cross borders without permission.

And the people?

They clapped.

Because spectacle is an aesthetic denial of the harrowing truth.

But not long into his reign,

truth became taboo.

The poor became invisible.

The press became obedient.

And the poets —

they either learned to rhyme praise

or vanished quietly

into exiled essays and omitted obituaries.

Soothsayers became spokesmen.

Truthsayers became refugees.

The kingdom became

a hollow stage,

its wealth and faith and spirit

extracted like marrow

from broken bone.

Across the borders,

the enemy danced naked on rooftops,

rejoicing real victories.

While His Highness

— our beloved Raja Raita Singh —

documented hallucinations of glory

as fragile as his ego.

in auctioned journalism and pimped integrities.

He paid the priests with applause.

He bought the artists with fear.

He bartered justice for slogans.

He silenced singers

whose voices didn’t harmonize

with his anthem.

And yet such audacity,

he called his empire “just.”

But on the backs of the broken,

what he built

was not a throne —

but a stage.

A theatre of control

where he performed

disjointed monologues

so elaborate and exhausting,

by the time he was done,

even the questions

forgot they existed.

Because that’s the thing about words, isn’t it?

If you can’t convince with them —

confuse with them.

So he did.

He flooded the land

with storms of half-truths,

called them prophecy.

He painted propaganda

onto crumbling monuments,

called it preservation.

He redefined reality

so frequently

that memory itself

became a state-controlled broadcast.

He didn’t need to jail his critics —

he just made the people

so afraid of themselves,

they locked their own mouths.

And me?

I could tell you

this is just a fable —

an absurd parable,

a cautionary tale carved from fiction.

But even fictional kings

come with a shred of conscience.

Even myths have morals.

This?

This is what happens

when fear wears a crown,

and performance replaces governance.

So if you're still clapping —

ask yourself:

Who wrote your applause?

If you're still chanting —

ask yourself:

Whose script are you following?

And if you're still calling him “Your Highness,”

then answer me this:

Who made you bow?

And did you ever rise again?