[True story, bro] When Umar, Anirban met Bassi's men and discussed Cicero

Somewhere in a south Delhi police station...

Umar Khalid, dressed in a striped blue-black V-necked sweater, and the Sarojini Nagar-ish muffler of indeterminate colour, sits on a chair and snaps his fingers, while Anirban Bhattacharya, sitting next to him, also on a chair but a slightly rickety one, is bobbing his head.  

A policeman in plainclothes (the Officer) sits on the other side of the table, his left leg resting on his right thigh, amply showcasing the gym-bulged torso, in a stark contrast with Umar Khalid's slight frame. Two other cops in khaki uniform stand on either side of the Officer.

Officer: Bhenc***... so, this is the legion muffler with which you covered your face while shouting anti-India slogans and commited sedition?

Umar: This muffler? Do you really think this is the same muffler that kept me company on that brilliant evening of subaltern self-pride? Seriously! How can you? Identity is a fluid thing. I am not the same person that I was yesterday.

Officer: Saale.. Just answer in Yes or No. And, where is the shawl?!

Umar: Please, understand. I am going to paraphrase the footnote on line two of para 27 of chapter three of my doctoral thesis on tribal histories of India. This muffler (interesting word: muffler. You see? Muffler. Muffling. Muffled. Muffins. [No, I am digressing!]) has, over the course of time, since I borrowed it from Comrade Rama Naga on a particularly chilly evening of one such "poetry reading" sessions in JNU, has seen cooption of descent. I am not so sure anymore. Even you shouldn't be.

Cop 1: Maarunga saale..

Anirban: Easy, easy. How can you ask if this is the same muffler? Do you think we JNUites don't care about hygiene?

Cop 2: Waah, waah. Swachh Bharat Abhi...

Umar: NO! No! Please, no! Not that cleansing in the name of cleaning drive! Don't utter the name of that puritanical, purifying drive towards an imposed sanitised India. That disinfected version of our beautiful dirt-laced plurality. You see dirt worship is a prevalent practice among some of our tribal peoples, and this Swachh Bharat is a forced remapping of our scum-love, even though we are littering every corner of Birmingham and East London with our instinctual appreciation of filth.

Officer: You anti-national! Did you just call Swachh Bharat...

Umar: Stop! Stop!

Cop 1: Maarunga saale..

Cop 2: Seedha seedha jawab de..

Officer: Tell me, who sponsored the anti-national event? Did Hafiz Saeed send Pakistani rupees? Was it a Western Union money transfer? Answer!

Anirban: Easy, easy bro.

Cop 1: Oye bra pehenta hoga tu. Teri maa ki...

Officer: Aah, shut the hell up!

Umar: Can you please not utter the names of numbskull believers in that utter ontological nothingness which you call god. What doesn't bore you makes you a scholar, but god, I swear by Sartre, bores me. My rejection of god is as absolute as India's rejection of post-Emergency Indira Gandhi.

Officer: Don't insinuate you Congressi agent, you Muslim terrorist! You want to break India into ten pieces!

Umar: You see, even though I am a Marxist-Leninist Communist, the history of balkanisation of Soviet Russia is something that really fascinates me.

Officer: History of what?

Umar: Balkanisation. Named for the Balkan countries, in Eastern Europe, that seceded from the then Soviet Union.

Officer: Ai, make note. The accused mentioned "secession".

Cop 1 to Cop 2: Ai, make note!

Cop 2 to Cop 1: Ai, make note!

Officer: Just make the f%#king note, you idiots!

Umar: I will explain. You see, Scotland wants to, Crimea wanted. What is secession? It's a democratic right to self-determination and self-rule of a people. As long as it's peaceful, theoretically, it is ...

Officer: Anti-national! Anti-national!

Anirban: Easy, easy, dude!

Officer: Tell me about the funding! How much did Hafiz Saeed send: where have you hidden all the money to make bombs?

Umar: Anirban, am I really supposed to handle the logistical details also?

Anirban: Bro, calm down. Officer, I'll tell you.

Officer: Logistical details? Sitting on a treasure trove of terrorist money! Traitors! Cicero said, "A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear."

Anirban: Dude, that cool line from Marcus Tullius is completely freaking out-of-context! You can't just cite non-sequiturs.

Officer: How dare you? This is a missive from the MHRD! We are supposed to read out this quote from Cicero (who is Marcus Tullius?) every time we interrogate you anti-nationals. And what the hell is a "non-sequitur"? A codeword for a secret mission to nuke New Delhi? Tell me, NOW!

Anirban: Chill, bro. You should recite the lines that come after that!

Officer: Line? What line? We were not given any more lines! We were asked to take this line.

Umar: Too linear for comfort. Dialectical materialism compels me to facilitate some theoretical complexities into this yet lexico-epistemo-anthropologically uninitiated brain of yours.

Officer: Anthra?

Anirban: Cool it. Cicero had more lines, Officer. Lines which go like this: "Too long have we said to ourselves 'intolerance of another's politics is barbarous and not to be countenanced in a civilized country. Are we not free? Shall a man be denied his right to speak under the law which established that right?' I tell you that freedom does not mean the freedom to exploit law in order to destroy it! It is not freedom which permits the Trojan Horse to be wheeled within the gates * * *. He who is not for Rome and Roman Law and Roman liberty is against Rome. He who espouses tyranny and oppression and the old dead despotisms is against Rome. He who plots against established authority and incites the populace to violence is against Rome. He cannot ride two horses at the same time. We cannot be for lawful ordinances and for an alien conspiracy at one and the same moment."

Officer: Stop! Stop!    

Anirban: "Though liberty is established by law, we must be vigilant, for liberty to enslave us is always present under that very liberty. Our Constitution speaks of the 'general welfare of the people.' Under that phrase all sorts of excesses can be employed by lusting tyrants to make us bondsmen."

Officer: STOP! STOP!

Umar: I'll tell you. Let's forget Cicero and his 43 BC Roman intelligence. Look closer. Our folk histories. Our myriad tribals, adivasis, their narratives, languages - dying, so many dying because there's no one to tell the tales..

Officer: Maoist! MAOIST!

Umar: Gayatri Chakraborty Spivak asked, "Can the subaltern speak?" I'll tell her now. I'll tell you now: "Can you hear when and what the subaltern speaks?"

Officer: MAOOOOISSSSST!

[Officer's iPhone 6S Plus rings.]

Officer (on the phone): Yes, Sir... But Bassi Sir? Yes, Sir...  No, Sir.   

[Hangs up phone.]

Officer: Madame HRD wants a new speechwriter. Her astrologer just told her that this godless Maoist terrorist anti-national is best suited for the job.

Umar: No! NO! I protest!

Officer: Chal beta. Do some sarkari job now!

Umar: NOOOOOOO! Viva La Revolucion! I PROTESSSSST.!

[Officer drags Umar out of the interrogation room.]

Anirban to Cop 1: Bro, got a light?