Owners of a bakery were recently compelled to explain why and how they got the name Karachi on the board outside their premises. They had to share their personal histories with us after decades of being allowed to go about their business peacefully. They had to explain because they were attacked by fellow Indians in retaliation for an attack on our armed forces.

In a country populated by people with common sense, this would seem incongruous. Who would attack a bakery to prove their patriotism? Who would beat up students to show their support for the armed forces? The incident didn't seem particularly strange though, because we now live in a twilight zone where our nationalism is called into question by men accused of murder, where Indians are lynched for what they eat or who they sleep with, and where our religious beliefs alone determine whether we matter in the larger scheme of things or not.