The Cockroaches took the capital city by storm. They came by train, by bus, by air, by metro, their numbers increasing by the hour. Hours before the first rays of sun lightened Delhi’s monsoon skies, they began to pour into Jantar Mantar in the tens of thousands. By sunrise, it was clear that a generation of desperate and furious young people who have seen their future snuffed out before their eyes was going to reclaim what their parents’ and grandparents’ generations had conceded: our dignity as a people and as a country. Our rights as citizens of a democracy. The protesters exorcised the corrosive fear that has become second nature to us all with their sheer courage and grace. And humour.

By the end of the day, it was clear that the protest had become about something far bigger than what the protesters or their leaders were demanding. Pradhan is small change now. The stakes are far bigger. The rot in the whole system of governance, from top to bottom, is clearly visible and has begun to stink like a decomposing corpse. Even the tiniest of the Cockroaches, some no more than seven or eight years old, were able to clearly articulate that.