 I do feel optimistic, you know, and for peculiar reasons because, you know, people who are completely involved with electoral politics would think that just six months after a government has won a major majority, it's a strange time for such an uprising. But I don't think it's a strange time. It came on the back of, you know, the abrogation of Section 370, the heart-breaking judgment of the Ayodhya judgment, and then this, and it was the straw that broke the camel's back. And what's really important about this, even though general elections are four years away, is that this movement blunts the only weapon that the BJP-RSS has, you know, which is communal hatred. I think that now the genie can't go back into the box, you know, the Muslim population coming out, Muslim women coming out, young Muslim women coming out. This is a great thing, you know, because it's been so confected. How can Muslims have a voice? So far, they've been pushed out of the media, they've been pushed out of, obviously, the political arena, and the only people that were allowed to speak were people, Maulana's, and people who were furthering the kind of right-wing Hindu agenda. Now you have a plethora of Muslim voices, radical voices, women's voices, all kinds of voices, a range, you know. So you can see from the range of these voices that it isn't an organized movement, you know. There are slogans that come up which are uncomfortable for some people and not for others. There's a kind of chaos in it which is beautiful. While we are looking at people, poets, dancers, painters, writers, students blunting this weapon in many ways, the other thing we are seeing, which is very important, is kind of federalization of India structurally while these people lose state election after state election. And so I feel it's very important for us to respect that federalism, you know, because I think that a kind of deep federalism is the only alternative to Balkanization. Because you know and I know the whole reason for the mobilization around NRCC is totally different in the northeast as it should be. Everywhere else, you know, we have to sort of make sure that state governments do what Bengal, Kerala, Punjab and all are doing, which is to refuse to implement this. At a district level, people have to force the district officials, they have to boycott the NPR, they have to refuse to give their papers. As a writer, does it fuel you with your ideas, your inspiration? Well, you know, I'm actually just writing about that now and there are two things that happen as a writer, you know, on the one hand it's wonderful to be in these huge crowds but I'm not such a one to address these huge audiences. Because to me, I feel that as a writer, I think the text needs to accommodate our complexity and our density against this over-simplification that fascism demands of us, you know. So that complexity and intricacy is not the space for a soapbox speech by me. So I just want to come out and say, in pilaf zindabad, but you know, the writing, yeah, the writing happens in a more private space, but yeah, it's exhilarating.