They pegged a pig to the clothesline
with plastic clips and surgical gloves.
It dangled between a bedsheet
and a minister’s shirt,
spinning slowly in the breeze
like it had something to say.

They said it wasn’t a pig.
They said it was a symbol.
Of stability. Of national hygiene.
Some even called it
the spinal cord of the republic.

When the wind shifted east,
they took it as a sign to ban onions.
When it swung to the west,
they rewrote the anthem.
When it pissed itself midair,
they televised it as rainfall statistics.

Children were taught to salute it.
Poets were told to avoid metaphors.
A man who laughed
was asked to apologise
on seventeen platforms.

Flies circled.
No one swatted them.
To swat a fly,
you’d have to admit
there was something to rot.

They changed the pig’s colour weekly—
blue, then white, then red
the logo of a streaming service.

At one point,
it started to bloat.
Someone said,
“This is how democracy expands.”
Someone else choked
on the smell and was arrested
for defaming the clothesline.

The pig never made a sound.
Not once.
But they claimed it had spoken
volumes.

And when it finally slipped,
split open on the ground—
they blamed gravity,
then foreign influence,
then moral decay.

The next day,
another pig was raised.
Smaller. Shinier.
With a microphone clipped to its ear
and a price tag tucked behind its leg.

The nation applauded.
The cameras rolled.
The clothesline held.