I keep returning to a moment in one of the videos. Imran Pratapgarhi says, or seems to say, “this country,” then says it again: “This country, this country”. The words are plain. His voice gives them weight.

What stayed with me was the thought underneath: That a democracy is longer-lived than any one political whim, trend, wave, or leader. Governments change. The country continues. The people keep speaking.

That is where I want to begin with Pratapgarhi — not with a party, a policy or a verdict, but with the sound of a poet addressing a crowd and asking us to listen for something that lasts.

In the posts I have been watching, the images move from a microphone to a gathering, from a press scrum to a Parliament corridor, from a man seated among other leaders to a face turned towards an audience. The captions carry couplets and longer poems.…