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The Revolution Will Be Archived: How a Nation’s Turmoil Will Be Recorded for Posterity – Rega Jha

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On January 5th, the night that JNU was attacked, I was at my parents’ home, visiting them for New Years’. My usual news-tracking method is to lie in bed with my phone pulled close to my face, refreshing Twitter. But my parents own something I don’t, something terrible: a television. So while muscle memory hunted updates on my phone every minute, I sat up in simultaneous worship of the news on TV, spotlit by flashing graphics for what felt like hours, forgetting again and again to breathe. The rule of law’s brutal coming apart: now a two-screen experience. Even as the objective truth screamed from behind JNU’s locked gates, the two screens broadcasted endless different versions of it. #LeftAttacksJNU and #ABVPGoons and #SOSJNU jostled to climb Twitter’s trending column, each with a different story in tow. At maybe 2am, when the attackers had left campus, when Twitter updates had slowed to a trickle and WhatsApps from Delhi had deescalated to “I’m home, I’m ok”, I tore myself away from b

This article originally appeared on FirstPost.com On January 5th, the night that JNU was attacked, I was at my parents’ home, visiting them for New Years’. My usual news-tracking method is to lie in bed with my phone pulled close to my face, refreshing Twitter. But my parents own something I don’t, something terrible: a television. So while muscle memory hunted updates on my phone every minute, I sat up in simultaneous worship of the news on TV, spotlit by flashing graphics for what felt like hours, forgetting again and again to breathe. The rule of law’s brutal coming apart: now a two-screen

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