Contrary to what news reports say, it was not a mere twenty or twenty five thousand yesterday at the Mumbai protest rally at the historic August Kranti Maidan, there were at any given time nearly ten times the same number surging outside, unable to get in, extending right from the small maidan, right up to and beyond Grant Road station over a kilometer away!
I was there, was initially disturbed by the press of bodies that hardly gave room to breathe and then started breathing easy, as I felt politeness and courtesy, and yes overall goodness being extended by men and women from every strata of life, coming in to show solidarity against the contentious act.
There was goodness, streaming in from every quarter.
Goodness, as I saw girl students from colleges, wearing clothes which would have caused many an eye to give them a second glance, but I did not see leering looks, hear an untoward comment, nor even men trying to block their way. In that unprecedented crowd, they were treated with absolute dignity.
Goodness, as I felt these lakhs trying to squeeze into this small maidan, where there could have easily been a stampede, but each one aware of the other’s need for space.
Goodness as men and women, from every community some not even knowing me, smiled, shook my hand, and just shared a warmth I’d thought had disappeared from our country.
Such goodness, warmth, such love was once rooted in this my beloved country, till uprooted by an arrogance!
An arrogance of sneers, smirks and sniggers!
An arrogance of contempt, insults and taunts!
An arrogance of scorn, scoffs and snickering!
An arrogance that has led to men looking at women as objects of lust, leading to assaults and rapes!
An arrogance of men looking at men as lessor than equals!
An arrogance of treating insiders as outsiders!
An arrogance to suppress freedom of expression, not confined to any one political party alone; even the arresting by a Congress Rajasthan government of an actress who used her freedom to write her views on the Gandhi family: Sheer arrogance!
An arrogance, that switches off the internet at the drop of a hat, 95 times this year, whenever there’s a protest!
Ah! But, in that same field where Gandhiji launched the Quit India movement many decades ago, and from where we derived our freedom from the oppressive British, yesterday I saw something to which we need to get back to, somethings which we still have within, and only need allow to resurface. I saw with amazing wonder; gentleness, politeness, and a return to goodness..!

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