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It was very clear from the scenes on the streets of Delhi on 10 October that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government would not be allowed a moment of relief by the people from now on. It has lost its sleep. It sees opponents everywhere. It is haunted by the ghosts of dissent.

At the entry points of roads, heavy barricades and the watchful eyes of hundreds of police personnel made it impossible for anyone walking to pass without being questioned. Most were turned away if the police personnel found anything suspicious in their responses.

But one could see that anyone walking was a suspect. My students informed me that they had been picked up from Minto Bridge, where they were having pakoras. They had seen a young man dragged out of a nearby public toilet where he had gone to relieve himself.

We live on the North Campus of the University of Delhi. My wife and I were wondering how we would be able to get to the protest site. We knew it would be impossible to get there. I had to catch my flight to Kolkata, so getting detained was not a very wise thing to risk. But we did want to be part of the protests.

Our day began with a message from a friend who wanted to know if we were fine. She had sent messages to some other friends, which remained unanswered. I told her that it was possible they had switched off their phones because the police were looking for all publicly known dissenters.

Then another friend, a senior lawyer, called to find out how to get to Jantar Mantar. She would walk if vehicles were not being allowed, she said.

And then our phone rang. It was a call from Gita Sahgal, daughter of the writer Nayantara Sahgal. She wanted to know how the day was unfolding in Delhi. She, the grand lady of India, had called to convey her ashirwad (blessings) to the young, fighting the Goliath.

So, what were we to do? We knew that the police in Delhi, Bengal, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, and every other state and city were already prowling the lanes, scrutinising every young man they encountered, wondering: was he likely to go to the Jantar Mantar protest on the 10th?

Everyone was a........

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