I'd always heard of post-vacation blues. But this may be the first time an entire generation in the world's largest democracy is experiencing something that could be called "post-protest withdrawal."
For nearly a month, Jantar Mantar ceased to be just another stretch of road in central Delhi. It became a home—home to students, parents, teachers, doctors, daily wage workers, retirees, first-time protesters and, somewhere among them, journalists like us.
Every free moment was spent rushing back to the protest site in search of stories. It didn't take long to realise that the real story was never on the stage. It was always among the people standing below it.
The movement, launched by the Cockroach Janta Party over the NEET paper leak controversy, brought together people from every corner of India. In a country where protests are often divided along regional, linguistic, caste or political lines, this one resisted every such label.
People from Kerala stood alongside those from Kashmir. Students from Bihar shared meals with families from Maharashtra. Complete strangers became familiar because they carried the same frustration and the same hope.
Now, after the Cockroach Janta Party announced the immediate withdrawal of the protest in what it described as an act of good faith following the resignation of Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan—one of the movement's central demands—thousands are packing their bags and returning to lives they had placed on hold.
The slogans have faded. The tarpaulin sheets are being folded away. And an entire generation is trying to rediscover what normal life feels like after weeks spent chanting for change.
The crowd at Jantar Mantar defied every stereotype.
Some arrived in Delhi carrying nothing more than a backpack, with no hotel reservation, no relatives to stay with and no idea how long they would remain. Others had initially dismissed the movement with the familiar phrase, "Not my circus, not my monkeys," only to eventually find themselves drawn in—whether by conviction, curiosity or simply the fear of missing out. Somewhere between the committed and the hesitant, everyone became part of the same story.
One afternoon, while we were filming, an elderly man approached us.
He struggled to unlock his phone. Even entering a four-digit PIN seemed unfamiliar. Quietly, he asked if we could help record a video.
My first instinct, like many others surrounded by influencers and content creators, was to assume he wanted to make social media content.
He didn't.
He wanted to send a message to his daughter.
He called her Gudiya, and her photograph was his phone's wallpaper.
He had travelled alone from a remote village in Uttar Pradesh, leaving her behind. He simply wanted someone to help record a short video so she would know he was safe—and that he was fighting for an education system that would not fail her.
Not far away stood another parent—a woman from Jamshedpur who told us travelling to Delhi was the first act of defiance in her life.
She had argued with her husband. She had opposed her in-laws. She had never before travelled alone outside her hometown.
Yet there she stood beneath the July sun, holding a placard.
There were school students, barely sixteen years old, spending months of saved pocket money not on themselves but on bottles of water, biscuits and medicines for fellow protesters.
There was also a daily wage labourer who arrived every evening and remained until dawn, quietly cleaning the protest grounds. Nobody paid him. Nobody asked him to do it. He simply believed that if people were fighting for something larger than themselves, the least he could do was ensure they woke up to a clean space.
Perhaps my strongest memory came on July 20, during the Chalo Sansad march.
By then, network jammers had been deployed around parts of the protest site. For a generation accustomed to booking cabs, sharing live locations and constantly refreshing social media, suddenly losing internet access felt strangely unsettling.
Almost instantly, everyone found themselves on the same mission: finding a signal.
People shared auto-rickshaws with complete strangers.
I was trying to do exactly that when a man asked whether he could join me in the auto. On any ordinary day, my answer would almost certainly have been no.
But those were not ordinary days.
People were frightened. Many were injured. Everyone was exhausted. Yet there was also an unusual sense of trust.
So I agreed.
Neither of us knew exactly where we wanted to go. The only instruction we gave the driver was, "Bhaiya, jahan internet aaye, wahan chhod dijiye."
During the journey, he introduced himself.
He was a soldier in the Indian Army.
He had arrived in Delhi at five that morning after travelling from Rajasthan.
He had not come for himself.
He had come for his younger brother, who died after the NEET paper leak in 2024 shattered years of preparation and hope.
The silence that followed weighed heavier than any slogan I heard throughout the month. I found myself completely speechless.
That moment is perhaps what I will remember long after the protest itself fades into history.
While some on the internet reduced Jantar Mantar to a Gen Z trend, a content creation hotspot or merely another cause of traffic congestion, those who stood there experienced something entirely different.
For Gudiya's father, it represented hope.
For the woman who stepped outside her home alone for the first time, it symbolised freedom.
For the labourer carrying a broom, it meant dignity.
For the soldier from Rajasthan, it became a search for justice through grief.
And for thousands of young Indians who had spent years believing that merit alone could shape their future, it was reassurance that they were not carrying their disappointment alone.
Protests are often remembered through headlines—through demands accepted or rejected, arrests, speeches and official statements.
But standing at Jantar Mantar taught me that history is rarely written from behind a microphone.
Perhaps that is what this generation will miss the most: the rare feeling of looking around at thousands of strangers and believing, if only for a brief moment, that together they could leave the country a little better than they found it.
Growing up, I often listened to my Baba's stories about his student days at JNU—a young Bengali student doing what many dismissed as pointless: protesting, organising and believing that change was possible. As a child, those stories sounded romantic and exciting.
Standing amid the crowds at Jantar Mantar over the past month, I finally understood them.
I finally understood why he chose to stand there.
Because sometimes, even if history never remembers your name, choosing to stand together becomes an act of hope in itself.
