…it’s not safe for you if you happen to be a samosa lover or a smoker. For the former, you will be tempted till your healthy resistance breaks and your metabolism gives up. As for the latter category, the smell of cigarettes is conspicuously missing from here despite a crowd of thousands. Unless you want to be treated like an outcast in a space where everyone is welcome, do not smoke. Or, find a discreet spot on the footpath where your billowing shame will find momentary refuge until someone says, “Thoda toh dhyan rakh lijiye” (be at least a little considerate).
The student protest called by the Cockroach Janta Party—a satirical outfit that spilled from social media to the streets of the National Capital Territory—is, to use the Gen Z parlance, “giving”. An organically growing outrage over India’s subpar education infrastructure, catalysed by irregularities in conducting high-stakes exams like the NEET, is remarkable in its scope and spectacle. Students across the country are fed up and going to Jantar Mantar whether in action or in spirit, as it allows them an expression of their dissatisfactions. From the broken primary and secondary education system in most states to compromised competitive exams and oft-delayed and cancelled recruitment schemes, the young are exasperated by it all.
Also Read: Treat the cause, not the symptom | Ht Editorial
No wonder, then, some are directing colourful language against the powers that be. Not everyone is impressed. A bunch of college students arriving late at night ignore the expletive-spouting cohort. “Ye toh badtamazi kar rahe hain. Dhang ke logon ke saath khade hote hain aage.” (This bunch is misbehaving, let’s go further up to join the more civil cohort.) The apocryphal Gen Z sense of humour is also on full display in the form of posters and slogans.
It’s not easy to be on either side of the barricade. A woman cop collapses at night and her colleagues try to comfort her. One of them jokes, “Give her a cigarette, she’ll be okay”. Pat comes a response from the oldest in the group, “Put a stinky shoe on her nose instead”.
The next morning, another bunch of women cops discuss how the parents must be worrying about their protesting children and how even their own parents wouldn’t have let them out. “We have also suffered a lot before donning this uniform,” says one woman constable. Another chimes in, “If we didn’t have this uniform on, we’d be standing on that side.”
They are our kids, seems to be the sentiment.
Also Read: How Delhi rallied behind student protesters, CJP at Jantar Mantar
Not everyone is so cordial, though. There’s a girl with a midsized stone in her bag. Her friend finds out and makes her throw it away. There is a middle-aged cop who is telling someone on the phone, “They are a bunch of good for nothings. My child is studying at home, unlike them. People are getting emotional and letting them have a party here”. Sure enough, some people are there just for food. A young middle-schooler shares, “I’m here to eat”. He’s accompanied a protesting elder brother, a class XII student who says, “I brought him along because he’ll trouble everyone at home”.
A young volunteer busy cleaning trash at the site shares, “It’s not a problem that some people here are clueless about our protest and its cause. At least they’ll end up learning something just by turning up”. Another ‘cleaning’ volunteer, an army officer in the making, adds, “At least they’ll learn discipline.”
And now to the samosa. Countless units of this beloved snack are ordered and distributed by volunteers. The flower children were fuelled by smoke, Gen Z is made and unmade by samosas. Or burgers. A craving for the latter, right during the police action against protestors, got Vijeta Dahiya of the CJP “fired” from the party. The mantra at Jantar Mantar, for the daring, seems to be: come for the samosa, stay for the solidarity.
