“Tum raat likho hum chaand likhenge” (You write the night; we will write the moon). This is the opening line of a powerful poem that the writer-activist Aamir Aziz wrote during the anti-CAA protests in 2020. And indeed, the students who led the pulsating, reverberating Gen Z protests in July were telling the government exactly that: If you are darkness, we are light. For millennials, boomers, and Gen Xers, long oppressed by the low, dark clouds of dogma and dystopia, Gen Z’s cavalier, saucy takedowns of the pashas of power felt like being on a train when it breaks out of a tunnel into bright sunlight. They exchanged gleeful notes on compulsively watching reels through the night, of doubling up with laughter at the sheer audacity of the satire, of their incredulity about the total absence of fear on the faces of the young students who conquered our streets, screens, and hearts during those heady weeks.It would be valid to ask if writing this romanticises the protest. But where, one responds, is the romance in the brutal police action that saw dozens of young people maimed by pellets, caned by batons, and injured by lathis sadistically studded with nails to draw blood? There is nothing remotely romantic about the FIRs registered against the protesters, in how their identities were doxxed, and in their subsequent harassment. It is frightening that the police used unsanctioned surveillance tools to record the faces of protesters, that these identities can be used later to harm them irreparably.When we write about these youngsters dancing under water cannons and skating away with the barricades, it is because we are awestruck by their laughing courage in the face of a government and a Home Minister who make no secret of the fact that they quell students or minorities or tribal people with the same weapon: maximum force.We write because this—this coming to the street—is literally the last resort of this country’s citizenry. And Gen Z knew it. For the longest time, Indians believed there would always be a Supreme Court to right the worst wrongs. That belief has been wiped out. Across issues, verdicts are either kept pending until there is a fait accompli, or they favour power. Even now, when petitioners sought a ban on using lethal pellet guns against unarmed protesters, the court instead sanctioned their “graded use”. But who grades, and when? Who sanctions, who fires?Video upon video shows that the police did not descend upon Jantar Mantar in good faith. They wore no badges. They used lathis not to hold back the crowd but to break bones. There is one particularly shattering video of a student running past a policeman, who casually extends a leg to trip him up. The student was running away; the policeman felled him out of spite. Videos show a truck, later identified as a police-confiscated vehicle, filled with stones and parked near the protest ground. They show accident-damaged vehicles stationed conveniently in the streets around Jantar Mantar. How does a government step back from this? From having created a monster that attacks its own citizens with extreme malice, confident it will never be held accountable? It is astonishing to bestow this rogue force with the wisdom to understand “graded response”. And foolish to imagine that awkward midnight reels will make up for the brutality.We write because we know there is no romance in the fear that this generation might be denied the power to vote a government out. From the deeply flawed SIR to the blatantly biased Election Commission to delimitation, every tool that can distort elections is being arrayed on the side of power. On the other side are memes and posters. We write because someone has to write about David when all of mass media is writing about Goliath. Although, frankly, these Davids don’t need us. They are doing quite well, thank you, and cackling with glee as they pull the king’s beard and run off with his mantle.Mostly, we write to evoke for posterity the sheer joy with which this protest played out, like dancing in the rain and thumbing one’s nose at the thunder. That poem Aamir Aziz wrote is titled “Sab Yaad Rakha Jayega” (Everything will be remembered), and this issue writes it all down.CONTRIBUTE YOUR COMMENTS