Rights on Paper, Lives in Limbo

Written By: Saptarchi Biswas

Edited By: Malaika Noorani

Graphic Designer: Iniya J

They wrote our names in books of law,

In ink that promised "equal for all."

Bound in pages, stamped with seals,

A nation signed what justice feels.

The Constitution spoke with grace,

Of dignity for every face.

Of freedom's breath, of voices free—

A dream of what this land could be.

Yet paper never walked the streets,

Or stood where hunger and silence meet.

It never waited outside a gate,

To learn that justice often comes too late.

Rights are framed in polished halls,

But echo faint through broken walls.

A child still studies beneath a light

That flickers more than hope at night.

A woman knows the law says "No"

To hands that strike, to wounds that show.

Yet every bruise asks one refrain:

Why does protection arrive in pain?

A worker builds another's dream,

Invisible within the scheme.

His hands raise towers toward the sky,

While his own roof leaks when clouds pass by.

A voice may vote, a vote may count,

Yet power climbs another mount.

Promises bloom before elections,

Then wilt beneath forgotten sections.

Some wear identities finally named,

Their existence legally reclaimed.

Yet every stare upon the train

Reminds them law can't soften disdain.

The refugee, the migrant, the poor,

Still knock on opportunity's door.

Recognition hangs like a distant star—

Visible, beautiful, painfully far.

What is a right if fear remains?

If equality survives in chains?

If justice lives inside a file,

While suffering waits another mile?

Perhaps the law is not the end,

But merely where the journey begins.

For rights are more than words we write;

They live only when they shape a life.

A signature cannot feed the weak.

A statute cannot always speak.

A clause cannot erase the scars

Left by centuries behind iron bars.

The measure of a nation lies

Not in the beauty of its legal ties,

But in whether the least among us can say,

"I lived my rights—not just read them one day."

So let the pages breathe and move.

Let courts and hearts together prove

That justice is not ink confined,

But compassion is practiced by humankind.

Until that dawn, these truths remain—

Rights on paper.

Lives in limbo.

A promise written,

Still waiting to become real.