In the fluid space where image and meaning collide, a digitally altered photograph of Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge spread across Indian social media in September 2026, falsely depicting him as excluded from a breakfast meeting with Rahul Gandhi and Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim. No such exclusion occurred — Kharge was simply not present at the event, and the original image contained no trace of him until someone placed him there, alone at the margins. The episode reminds us that in political life, a fabricated wound can draw as much blood as a real one, and that the architect