At the start of the year, doing the now unthinkable thing, travelling on a long distance bus in another country, I woke up to find that my glasses had somehow fallen off my nose at night, and taken their own trip into the great bus beyond. No one on the bus spoke English and they were unable to help me find my glasses. I felt acutely vulnerable and disoriented, child's tears pricking my eyes. Only when I reached my destination and fished my spare glasses out did I feel in control of myself again.

As a speccy, when I read that someone had stolen the glasses of the activist Gautam Navlakha, currently in prison as an accused in the Bhima Koregaon case, I was puzzled. Spectacles are a strange object-more or less worthless to others, inordinately valuable to their owner. But of course, many chashumuddins have known bullies in school, who would steal our glasses or crush them, just to enjoy the sight of our frantic helplessness. It is a cliché because it's true, that bullies need to dehumanise others in order to feel strong.