January 1, 2026 07:56 AM IST First published on: Jan 1, 2026 at 07:56 AM ISTOften, just outside the frame of the video that goes viral, there is a quiet and resolute presence. Take the incident, in the closing days of 2025, in a cafe in Bareilly. Vigilantes attacked a birthday party of a 22-year-old woman, purportedly because two young people in the group belonged to the Muslim community. And yet listen to her, three days later, and amid the bleakness, there is reason to hope. It lies in her refusal to let the goons have the last word: “I cannot understand who gave these assailants the authority to judge people and decide who I should be friends with,” she told this newspaper. It lies, too, in her description of the unselfconsciously open rhythms of her home. Her parents and relatives have never dictated to her the religion of her friends, she said. “They know who my friends are. If they have no objections…” Long after the noise made by the vigilantes has died down, captured as “news” and amplified by its algorithms, the quiet assertion of the young woman and the low-key decency of her relatives and parents will endure. It makes up the middle space of a diverse country, where it holds and lives and breathes together, even as the day’s headlines are made by the raucous extremes.This is a challenge for the new year — to see what lies in the middle, and beneath. To hear the low and humdrum voices that articulate the shared stakes and values and concerns. To seize the unspectacular common ground, where lives intersect and people meet. Because, amid the shrill polarisation, it is all too easy to lose sight of these. The dominant politics of the day emboldens enactments of conflict and intolerance, promises them a climate of impunity. The prism of news itself has become distortionary — it preys upon faultlines and divisions. It rewards performances of anger and hate. After all, acts of everyday compassion and kindness are not the stuff of viral videos.AdvertisementIt will not be easy. But especially after news comes in, in the year’s last month, of attacks on churches and Christian congregations, the killing of a student from Tripura studying in Dehradun because he is from the Northeast, attacks on Kashmiri shawl sellers in Haryana and Himachal Pradesh, it is necessary to widen the frame of the viewfinder. To include those who stand up, outside the frame, choosing, again and again, in the quotidian routine of their days, to reject hate and prejudice. Like the parents of the young woman in Bareilly, who have never decided the religion of her friends, and who she invites to her birthday party. They ensure, and protect, a Happy New Year.