सतरंगी · SATRANGI

"Of seven colours" — a story from Jantar Mantar, July 2026.
Fiction. The events are not.

Logline

In the monsoon of 2026, after the NEET-UG paper leak cancels the futures of 22 lakh students, a 19-year-old girl from Bihar boards a train to Delhi and walks into the middle of a real, ongoing, unresolved protest. She doesn't come back the same.

Episode 1 — BEFORE

Sitamarhi, Bihar. May–July 2026.

Ananya Sharma is nineteen. Her father teaches Class 8 at the government middle school in Sitamarhi; her mother takes in tailoring from the front room of their small house; her younger brother is in Class 10. The house has two rooms, a fan that whirs but does not cool, and a calendar on the wall with May 3 circled three times in red.

She has been preparing for NEET-UG for two years. NEET is the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test — the single exam that decides whether a student becomes a doctor in India, or does not. 22 lakh students sit for it every year. There is no second door into the profession that anyone in her family has ever used.

On the morning of May 3, 2026, Ananya reaches her exam centre in Muzaffarpur two hours early. She wears a clean salwar kameez. She carries a transparent water bottle. She whispers a small prayer in the auto. "हे भगवान, पास हो जाएँ।" — May I pass, O Lord.

Three hours later, she walks out of the hall. The paper was easy. She knows it. Her father is waiting under a neem tree with a pack of Parle-G and a smile. They take the bus home.

Two days later, a paper is leaked on Telegram. The same paper. Hours before the exam. The same paper she answered.

On May 12, 2026, the Government of India cancels the exam. The news anchor reads from a sheet of paper. Ananya's mother is on the sofa with a half-stitched blouse in her lap. Her father is in the kitchen doorway. He does not move. The ceiling fan turns. The news anchor keeps reading.

Ananya is in her room. She does not come out for the rest of the day.

In the weeks that follow, the family moves through five small stages: hope that there will be a re-exam, fear that there will not, an announcement that there will, more fear, and a quiet, joint decision to try again. Her father says only one thing, on the way back from the coaching centre: "एक और बार। बस एक और बार।" — One more time. Just one more time.

She re-appears for the re-exam in June. This time the question paper is clean. She finishes. She waits.

While she waits, twenty students who had appeared for the original May 3 exam — or who had been waiting for the results that never came — die by suicide. They are scattered across Kota, Jaipur, Hyderabad, Patna, and smaller towns whose names the national news does not print. The compensation demand that will later be made at Jantar Mantar — Rs 1 crore per family — is for them. For their parents. For the empty chair at the dinner table.

Ananya reads the article on her father's phone. Her hands are steady. Her face is not.

Her best friend Priya, who had been her study partner since Class 11, sends a message in late June: "Yaar, mujhse nahi hoga. Main chhod rahi hoon." — I can't do this. I'm quitting. Ananya types "Theek hai. Tu theek hai." — Okay. You be okay. She sends it. She puts the phone down. She does not message anyone else that night.

On June 6, 2026, a youth-led movement called the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) holds its first protest at Jantar Mantar. The name came from a comment by the Chief Justice of India in a NEET court hearing, calling paper-leak accused "cockroaches." The students took the word and made it their flag.

On June 28, climate and education activist Sonam Wangchuk begins an indefinite hunger strike at Jantar Mantar in solidarity. He is 59. He has a salt-tolerance of three weeks.

Ananya watches the news. A young woman is being interviewed. "We are not asking for the moon. We are asking for an exam that has not already been sold."

That night, Ananya's mother finds a printed train ticket in the bottom of Ananya's school bag. New Delhi. Date: July 18. The mother holds the ticket. She does not say anything. She puts it back exactly where it was.

On the morning of July 18, the family stands at Sitamarhi station. The father is quiet. The mother hugs Ananya for a long time and says, into her shoulder, only: "Khana time pe khana." — Eat on time. The brother, fifteen, just stands there with his schoolbag over his chest, looking at his sister like he is trying to remember her face for later.

The train pulls out. Ananya watches Bihar turn into Uttar Pradesh turn into Delhi. The notebook in her lap is closed. She is done studying. She is going.

Episode 2 — THE TRAIN

Patna–Lucknow–Agra–Delhi. July 18–19, 2026.

The train is the Bihar Sampark Kranti Express. Ananya has an upper berth. Below her, two boys, late teens, with backpacks. One is asleep. The other is writing something in a small notebook in a handwriting even smaller than hers.

She comes down to use the bathroom and stops. The boy who is writing looks up. He is from Lucknow. His name is Aman. The sleeping one is Ishaan, also from Lucknow. Both appeared for the NEET re-exam. Both are going to Jantar Mantar.

"Tu bas Delhi dekhne jaa rahi hai ya —" Aman starts.
"Jaanta hai tu," Ananya says, before he finishes.
"Accha," he says.

Ishaan wakes up. He shows her a video on his phone, brightness low, volume almost off. Sonam Wangchuk at Jantar Mantar, sitting on a cot, weak, a shawl over his legs. He is saying: "When your exam paper is sold before you sit for it, your whole life is sold."

Ananya watches the video three times. She does not cry. She has been not-crying for two months. She is very good at it.

The night train moves through central India. The coach is lit yellow. An upper-berth boy is reading a copy of The Hindu from three days ago. Two girls across the aisle are hand-painting posters with brushes from a kids' art kit. One of the posters, in a careful Devanagari, reads: "हमारा भविष्य बिक नहीं है।" — Our future is not for sale. In the next coach, a boy is holding his up to a borrowed hair dryer to dry the paint.

Morning. The train pulls into Old Delhi. The platform is chaos. The heat outside the station hits like a hand on the chest. The wall just outside the metro entrance has a poster someone has wheat-pasted overnight: "EDUCATION IS A RIGHT, NOT A PRIVILEGE." Ananya takes a photo of it. She will not remember why, later, but the photo will be on her phone for a long time.

The Metro to Rajiv Chowk. The famous white colonial arches of Connaught Place. A sky the colour of a bruise about to rain. They walk toward Jantar Mantar. The sundials of the 1724 observatory appear above the trees. The traffic is loud. The first chants are audible from two streets away.

They arrive. There are tents. There are banners. There are people. There is a small library under a tarp, a community kitchen, and at the centre, on a cot, an older man wrapped in a shawl, with a saline drip on a stand and a pulse oximeter on his finger.

Ananya stands at the edge of the protest. She is nineteen. She is two thousand kilometres from home. She has not slept in a train berth in three years. She does not know anyone here.

She takes one step in.

Episode 3 — JANTAR MANTAR

Jantar Mantar, New Delhi. July 19, 2026.

The Jantar Mantar observatory was built in 1724 by Maharaja Jai Singh II of Jaipur. It is a forest of stone sundials. The biggest is the Samrat Yantra — 73 feet high, a triangular gnomon that casts a shadow you can read the time from across the city. It was built to read the sun.

In July 2026, students are reading something else.

A volunteer hands Ananya a pamphlet and a water bottle. "Stay hydrated. Welcome." She finds a patch of ground under a neem tree, near Aman and Ishaan. People introduce themselves. A girl from Jaipur who took a 14-hour bus. A PhD student from JNU who has been at this for years. A schoolteacher from Patna who came because "this is my country too." A retired man in a white kurta who reads aloud from a Bhagat Singh essay to anyone who sits down.

The hunger striker, on his cot, opens his eyes. He sees Ananya. He does not speak. She does not speak. They look at each other for a long moment. He closes his eyes again. She looks away.

Night falls. The protest site becomes a small city of lights. Phone flashlights, candles, one lantern. The Samrat Yantra is illuminated from below by a single bulb someone has run an extension cable to. People are talking in small groups. Some are sleeping. Some are chanting. The rain starts.

The rain is the real monsoon, the one Delhi has been waiting three weeks for. It falls on the tents, on the sundials, on the hunger striker's cot, on the chalk drawings of Bhagat Singh and Ambedkar on the footpath. Some students run into it. Some hold up posters and let the paint run, smiling. Some are quiet, watching the hunger striker being moved carefully to a covered area, a doctor checking his pulse with a torch in one hand, the saline bottle held by a volunteer in the other.

In the morning, the site is muddy. The banners are drying in the sun that has come back, sharp and white. A group is repainting. One student is making a careful portrait of Mahatma Gandhi in charcoal on cardboard. Another, a girl of about seventeen, is making a poster with the names of the twenty students who died.

Her hand is steady. The brush trembles slightly. She is not the only one watching her.

The community kitchen serves dal and rice in steel plates. A volunteer with a ladle is laughing. "Pani puri bhi hai, didi!" Ananya laughs for the first time in a long time.

At the edge of the site, an old chai wala in a dhoti and thick glasses has set up a small stall. He refuses payment. A handwritten sign on a piece of cardboard reads: "मुफ़्त चाय · FREE CHAI FOR STUDENTS." He says, to Ananya, almost as an apology: "मैं पढ़ नहीं पाया। तुम पढ़ लो।" — I couldn't study. You study. She does not know what to say. She drinks the chai. It is too sweet. It is the best chai she has ever had.

In the afternoon, the Krantikari Yuva Sangathan performs a mock funeral for the "dead education system." Black cloth. An empty coffin. Wailing. "EDUCATION IS DEAD." Some of the performers are crying. Some are laughing. Some are just standing, watching. It is theatre. It is grief. It is the same thing, here, today.

Ananya stands at the edge. She has been holding everything in for two months.

A young man, about her age, stands next to her. He is quiet. They both watch. After a long time, he says, almost to himself: "Bhaiya meri behen thi." — The brother I had was my sister. He means the sibling he lost, during the leak crisis, to suicide. He does not say more. Ananya puts her hand on his shoulder. He leans into it. They do not speak. They do not need to.

That night, someone has a small speaker. A student is singing Faiz Ahmed Faiz — "Bol ki lab azaad hain tere / Bol zabaan ab tak teri hai." — Speak, for your lips are free / Speak, your tongue is still yours. A circle of students joins in, quietly at first, then louder. People from a different protest at the same site, unrelated, come over and ask what the song is. They stay. They sing. For a few minutes, the politics is gone. There is just the song.

A policeman stands at the edge of the barricade, watching. Constable Yadav, 35. He has a daughter Ananya's age, in Aligarh, in her second year of college, studying for NEET. He does not say this to anyone. He takes a sip from his water bottle. He is not a villain. He is a man doing a job he does not love, watching children his daughter's age, and going home to his daughter at the end of his shift.

The young CJP leader, Abhijeet Dipke, takes the megaphone. His voice is hoarse. He has not eaten in four days. He has been doing this since June 6. "Dilli ne suna? Hamla awaaz!" — Has Delhi heard? Our voice. The crowd responds. The All India Students' Association announces they will continue an indefinite fast. The hunger strikers link arms. The fasting count goes up.

Day breaks. July 20. The monsoon session of Parliament opens today. The plan is to march from Jantar Mantar to Parliament and submit the demands in person. Permission has been denied. They are going anyway.

A volunteer is handing out vinegar-soaked cloth for tear gas. People are tying their shoelaces. Hugging each other. There is a long, pregnant silence. The rain starts again.

The march begins. Thousands. Portraits of Bhagat Singh and Ambedkar held high. Singing. Chanting. "कौन है हमारा दुश्मन? सरकार!" — Who is our enemy? The government! The chant is real. It has been heard on the news. The script does not invent it.

The barricades. Multiple lines. Police in riot gear. The crowd slows but does not stop. The first line of protesters link arms.

The first tear-gas canister flies overhead, white smoke trailing. A girl screams. The crowd compresses. People push. Ananya, in the middle, loses sight of Ishaan. She reaches for Aman's hand. Their hands find each other.

A woman in a white salwar — maybe twenty — falls. Ananya bends down to help her up. A policeman's baton comes down, hitting the woman's shoulder, not Ananya's, but Ananya sees the impact on the woman's face. The woman's mouth opens but no sound comes out. Ananya is pulled up by Aman. They run. Behind them, the barricade gives way. The crowd scatters. The woman in white is on the ground, not moving.

A long, vertical panel. Just the rain. Just the smoke. Just a single rubber slipper on the ground, abandoned.

Later. The site is in chaos. Police in. Tents being dismantled. People being detained. Ananya, Aman, Ishaan find each other in the crowd. They are okay. They are not okay. They are okay.

Episode 4 — AFTER THE RAIN

Jantar Mantar, RML Hospital, Parliament Street. July 21–22, 2026.

The morning of July 21. The rain has washed everything. The protest site is half-dismantled. Banners are torn. The sundial is intact, the way it has been for three hundred years. Ananya is sitting on the curb. Her dupatta is torn. Her notebook is missing.

Her phone buzzes. A news alert: "21-year-old woman in ICU at Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital after Jantar Mantar protest." A photo. It is the woman in white.

Ananya stands up. She starts walking. Aman and Ishaan follow. They do not say anything.

RML Hospital. The emergency ward. Beds in the corridor. Injured students. Bandaged heads. Splinted arms. The 21-year-old is in the ICU. A board on the door says "Critical." A nurse lets Ananya look through the window. The woman in white is on a ventilator. A man, perhaps her father, is sitting beside her, holding her hand, eyes closed. He does not know Ananya is there. Ananya's hand is on the glass. Her breath fogs it.

Outside the hospital: ambulances, police cars, news vans. A reporter is doing a live shot. A photographer takes a photo of Ananya without asking. She covers her face.

In the afternoon, back at Jantar Mantar, the CJP is regrouping. A delegation has gone to meet the Union Health Minister, J. P. Nadda. They are waiting. Ananya waits with them. Everyone is waiting.

The delegation returns in the evening. Faces long. The minister has heard them. The minister has said the doors for dialogue remain open. The minister has urged the protesters to end their sit-in and help restore normalcy. The resignation has not been discussed. The compensation has not been announced. The demands have not been met.

Ananya's hand, holding her phone. The minister's tweet on the screen. "Dialogue doors remain open." The cursor blinks at the end of the sentence.

Night. Jantar Mantar again. Fewer people. The hunger strikers are still on their fast. The young man who lost his sibling is sitting in the same spot, looking at the place where the mock coffin was.

An older woman in a sari walks into the protest site. She is carrying a steel tiffin. She goes straight to the hunger strikers. She opens the tiffin. Just rice and dal. She says, to no one in particular: "Bachchon ke liye laaya hoon. Bhai jaanta hai." — I brought it for the children. The brother knows. She leaves. The tiffin is on the cot. No one knows who she is. No one will ever know who she is.

The chai wala is still there. He gives free chai to whoever comes. He does not talk about politics. He just gives chai.

A phone video goes viral. A man in Mumbai, 1,500 kilometres away, has ordered food on Zomato for "whoever looks hungry at the protest." A delivery rider is reading the note to the camera. The protesters are laughing for the first time in a while. It is the most human thing that has happened in three days.

Ananya watches the video on her phone. Smiling. Crying at the same time. She does not know which.

The hunger striker, Sonam-ji, has been on strike for twenty-one days. His body is failing. The doctors come. They say he needs to be moved to hospital. He refuses. "I will go when the demands are met." The police arrive. They say he has to go. The protesters link arms around his cot. The police pull. It takes a long time. The protesters are outnumbered.

He is moved to the ambulance on a stretcher. His hand is in the air, in a fist. The crowd is silent. Just the rain and the siren.

Morning. July 22. The protest is smaller. The hunger striker is in hospital. His wife says his fast continues. The AISA students break their fast after being visited by parliamentarians, an actor, a lawyer, an activist. The CJP says the movement will not stop. The Government of India deploys twenty additional companies of the CRPF. The compensation has not been announced. The minister has not resigned. The court has not given an order. The students are still there.

Ananya's phone rings. Her mother. She hesitates. She picks up. Her mother says, voice shaking, just one word: "Beta?" — Daughter?

Ananya says: "Haan, Maa. Main theek hoon. Main aa rahi hoon." — Yes, Ma. I'm okay. I'm coming home.

She does not know if it is true.

She packs her small bag. She does not take down a banner. She does not take a sign. She takes one thing — the poster with the twenty names, folded carefully, and put inside the cover of her notebook.

Episode 5 — बाक़ी · BAQI

Sitamarhi, Bihar. Late July 2026.

Baqi — the rest, what remains, the future.

The train home. The reverse of the journey. Delhi to Uttar Pradesh to Bihar. The notebook in her lap. Closed.

She opens it. On the inside cover, in her small handwriting, is the list of the twenty names. She did not write it. Someone did. She does not remember who. She is not surprised.

A fellow passenger — an old man in a white kurta — glances at the notebook. He reads the names. After a while, he asks, softly: "Yeh kaun the?" — Who were they?

Ananya: "Students. Mere jaise." — Students. Like me.

The old man: "Aur ab?" — And now?

Ananya: "Ab baqi hai." — Now the rest remains.

Home. The town. The auto-rickshaws. The power lines crossing the sky. The same.

Her mother opens the door. She hugs her. She does not say anything. Her father is in the kitchen. He comes out. He holds her face. "Tum theek ho?" — Are you okay? She nods.

Her brother is in Class 10 now. He is studying for his boards. He looks at his sister differently. He says, after a pause: "Didi, mujhe bhi doctor banna hai." — Sister, I also want to be a doctor.

Ananya: "Pehle padhai karo. Uske baad dekhenge." — Study first. We'll see after.

She smiles. It is a small smile, but it is real.

Night. Ananya in her room. Same desk. Same fan. Same books. But she is older now, in the way that only matters to her.

She opens her phone. The news from Delhi. The CJP is still at Jantar Mantar. Sonam Wangchuk is in hospital but his fast continues. New FIRs. The mock funeral is being repeated. The protest is smaller but not gone. The minister's tweet is still on her screen. "Dialogue doors remain open."

She writes a letter. To the twenty students. To the woman in the ICU. To the young man who lost his sibling. To the chai wala. To her future self. She does not send the letter to anyone. She puts it in the notebook with the twenty names.

She looks out the window. The pre-monsoon sky. The town is quiet. The power lines cross the sky. Somewhere in the distance, a train horn.

The final panel. Ananya's silhouette at the window. The notebook in her hand. Outside, the town. Above, the same sky that hangs over Delhi. The same sun that casts shadows on the sundial at Jantar Mantar. The same sun, three hundred years ago, that Maharaja Jai Singh II built an instrument to read.

The students, in 2026, are reading something else.

Episode 6 — जुलाई २५ · JULY 25

Jantar Mantar, Delhi · Sitamarhi, Bihar. Saturday, 25 July 2026.

Three days after Ananya comes home, the sky over Sitamarhi has finally broken. The monsoon is here. The fan is whirring, but this time the air that comes off it is cool.

She is at her desk. Same books. Same notebook, open. The poster with the twenty names is folded inside, where she keeps it now. She is not studying. She is looking at her phone. The phone has been buzzing all morning, but she has not picked it up. She is waiting for something. She does not know what.

At 2:25 PM IST, Dharmendra Pradhan posts on X. Ananya sees it because Aman has sent her a screenshot with one word above it: "देखा।" (Did you see.) The post is a letter to the Prime Minister. "I have submitted my resignation to the Honorable Prime Minister… so that anti-national forces do not take advantage of the situation that has arisen at Jantar Mantar and across the country, that the unity of the nation remains intact, that the future of even a single student of India does not get entangled in legal complications, and that our children devote their time to studies and focus on building their careers…"

Ananya reads the letter twice. She does not cry. She is still very good at not crying. But her eyes are wet for the second time in this story. The first time was for the twenty names. This time is different. This time is for the boy in Class 10 who wants to be a doctor. This time is for the next twenty students, who will not have to be twenty.

Her phone rings. Aman. "Dekha?" (Did you see?) "Dekha," she says. Both are quiet for a moment. Then Aman: "Ab baqi." (Now the rest.) Ananya, smiling, in a voice Aman has never heard from her before: "Haan. Ab baqi." (Yes. Now the rest.)

At Jantar Mantar, three hundred kilometres north, the protest site erupts. The wide shot is hard to describe in a panel. People are dancing. Someone is holding up a sign that says, in big Devanagari: "छात्रा शक्ति ज़िंदाबाद।" (Long live student power.) Someone is crying. Someone is laughing. The Samrat Yantra is in the background, unchanged, the way it has been for three hundred years. The sundials do not celebrate. They do not need to. They have seen this before. They have seen this in 1724. They have seen this in 1947. They have seen this in 2026. They are still standing.

Abhijeet Dipke takes the megaphone. His voice is hoarse. He has not slept in three days. He says: "Dharmendra Pradhan has resigned!" The crowd erupts. He waits. He raises his hand. The crowd quiets, slowly. He continues: "And this resignation is proof that if you people are not afraid, if you people do not bow down to this government, then we can take the resignation of anyone. But we have two more demands. The compensation — one crore rupees for every family of every child who died by suicide after the NEET cancellation. And FIRs against the police officers who lathicharged the students on July 20. We will not go like this. We will not go home until every demand is met." The crowd cheers again, but the message is being heard. The celebration is real, but it is tempered. The protest is not over. The story is not over.

At the edge of the site, the chai wala is at his stall. The handwritten sign on cardboard is still there, the paint running a little from the rain: "मुफ़्त चाय · FREE CHAI FOR STUDENTS." He is pouring chai. He is smiling. He has not smiled like this in a month. A student comes up to him with a phone, asking for a photo. He refuses. "Chai piyo, photo mat lo." (Drink the chai, don't take the photo.) The student drinks the chai. It is too sweet. It is still the best chai in Delhi.

At the spot where Sonam-ji's cot used to be, the cot is folded and stacked against a tent pole. The saline stand is gone. The pulse oximeter is gone. Where his head used to be, someone has placed a small bouquet of marigolds. Below the flowers, on a piece of paper in handwriting that does not match Sonam-ji's, is written: "वापस आना।" (Come back.) The marigolds are fresh. They will not be fresh tomorrow. But today they are.

The poster with the twenty names is still there. Pinned to the same tent pole. Half-torn by the wind, faded by the rain, the paint running. But the names are still readable. They will still be readable next week. They will still be readable next month. They were written to be readable for a long time.

A young woman — maybe a student who has just arrived from another city, Patna, Bhopal, Indore, it does not matter — is standing at the edge of the celebration. She is not joining yet. She is reading the twenty names. One by one. Her lips are moving. She is starting to understand. The reader, watching her, is starting to understand too.

In Sitamarhi, Ananya's brother runs in from outside. He is still in his school uniform. He has run the whole way home. "Didi! Didi! Pradhan ne istifa de diya!" (Sister! Sister! Pradhan has resigned!) Ananya's mother is behind him, drying her hands on her saree. She is smiling for the first time in months. Her father is on the phone with someone — a colleague, a friend, his brother, it does not matter. The house has a small sound in it that was not there three days ago. The sound is not laughter. The sound is something before laughter. The sound is the breath before the breath before the breath.

Ananya picks up her phone. She calls Priya. The friend who quit. The friend who said "मुझसे नहीं होगा।" (I can't do this.) Priya picks up on the third ring. Ananya: "सुन।" (Listen.) Priya: "हाँ?" (Yes?) Ananya: "अगला साल। साथ में पढ़ेंगे।" (Next year. We'll study together.) Priya is quiet. Then: "पक्का?" (Promise?) Ananya: "पक्का।" (Promise.)

That night, Ananya is at her window. The same window as Episode 5. The same sky. The same power lines crossing the sky in seven directions. But the notebook on her desk is open to a new page. She is writing. Not the twenty names. Something else. A list. We cannot read it. But we can see her hand, moving, steady. The hand that held Aman's hand in the crowd. The hand that touched the ICU glass. The hand that folded the poster with the twenty names. The hand is moving. The hand is not stopping.

The final panel. The Samrat Yantra at Jantar Mantar at night. The protest is smaller now. The hunger striker is in hospital. The minister has resigned. The compensation is not yet announced. The FIRs against the police are not yet filed. The students are still there, but the students are also leaving, one by one, going back to their towns, to their coaching centres, to their notebooks, to the next exam. The sundial stands in the centre of the frame, the way it has stood for three hundred years. The same shadow. The same sky. The same India.

The students, in 2026, read something the sundial did not expect. The sundial was built to read the sun. The students, in 2026, taught the sundial how to read the time it takes a paper to leak, a student to break, a minister to fall, and a country to remember that its children are not for sale.

The sundial will be here in 3026. The students will be remembered in 3026. The twenty names are written in a notebook in Sitamarhi. They are written on a poster in Delhi. They are written in the rain. They are written in the smoke. They are written in a chai cup. They are written on a hospital glass. They are written in a brother who wants to be a doctor. They are written in a friend who said "पक्का।" (Promise.)

They are written in a country that, for one week in July 2026, remembered.

End card

सतरंगी · SATRANGI
A story from Jantar Mantar, July 2026 — extended through 25 July

In memory of the twenty students who did not live to see the answer key.

This story is fiction. The events are not.

On 25 July 2026, Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan resigned, hours before the third round of talks between the CJP and the Centre. The protest at Jantar Mantar continues. The other demands — Rs 1 crore compensation for the families of the twenty students who died by suicide, and FIRs against the police officers responsible for the lathicharge on 20 July — remain unmet as of this writing.

सतरंगी means "of seven colours." The seven are the seven people Ananya meets and remembers: Aman, Ishaan, the woman in white, the young man who lost his sibling, the hunger striker Sonam-ji, the chai wala, and her mother at the door.

And the eighth colour, the colour that does not have a name, is the boy in Class 10 who said, "Didi, mujhe bhi doctor banna hai."