Four years later, I find myself standing before the charred remains of Nepal’s Parliament, a building once symbolic of governance, now a monument to loss. Over the span of a single work week, I witnessed a place I have come to call home unravel and rebuild itself.

 

The Parliament, once a stage for power, became a site of reckoning. This building had silently witnessed the murder of peaceful protestors at the hands of the police, an act that transformed it into a symbol of oppression. In the wake of that horror, the people set it aflame. Three days later, I entered what was left of it. The roof had collapsed. The chambers were unrecognizable. Amid the debris, only the pillars remained, burnt, rusted, skeletal.

 

They stood like ghosts of an idea, the idea of democracy itself. Once meant to uphold checks and balances, these pillars now mirrored the corrosion of the very values they were built to protect. In photographing them, I saw more than ruins; I saw a portrait of our times, of institutions decaying under the weight of authoritarianism, and of people still standing amidst the ashes, ready to rebuild.

 

Pillars of Democracy is a reflection on fragility and endurance, of structures, systems, and societies. It questions what remains when the architecture of power collapses, and whether those who rise from the streets can forge something stronger in its wake.