My phone rang at the exact moment the first tweet about Prashant Bhushan being attacked came across my screen. On automatic pilot, I answered the phone (I realized later that the caller was a distant relative of Prashant’s) and listened numbly but without comprehending anything.

I hang up and I watch the video of the attack. I watch it again and again. Physically sickened by the brutality of it, I keep watching because I simply cannot believe it.

There is Prashant’s familiar face at the beginning, explaining his point carefully and calmly, when something to his right distracts him. He turns to see what it is and is slapped hard across his face. Then, for what seems like forever, a man pummels him repeatedly, throws him to the floor, stomps on his chest and punches him wherever he can land a fist, all the while slapping and punching a man in a pink shirt who tries to intervene.

I am watching this unfold in front of me and I am simply not able to take it in. I replay it. It can’t be happening. There’s Prashant’s face again. He’s explaining something. His head turns. There’s that hand. There’s that deranged man, punching, pounding, shouting. His foot comes down on a man who is now lying on the floor. I see Prashant’s white socks this time. I note how thin he is.

I watch it a third time. This time, for the first time, I realize that the whole thing happens in 22 seconds. This time, I realize that Prashant is back on his feet 26 seconds in. He’s dazed, stunned. I watch him standing there, trying to understand what had happened.

Then, just for a second,  he loses control and he repeatedly slaps the man who was – seconds before – attacking him.

Then, just as suddenly, he pulls himself together. He is a lawyer. He believes in the law, not the dumb fury of a demented fanatic. He believes in a system of justice. He believes in democracy, in freedom of speech and in the right to dissent. He believes he has the right to his opinions and that his attacker does too. But that neither of them have the right to physically assault the other.

“Police ko bulao,” he says, firmly and clearly.

It’s easy (and probably fun for some) to twist this event around to make it look like Prashant is the bad guy. To say that he got what he deserved for voicing an unpopular opinion and that when he, for a few seconds, reacted with instinctive rage at being attacked without warning and with no chance to defend himself, he was being a hypocrite.

Twitter is full of people like that. So is facebook. So is Chandni Chowk, the South Block and Crawford Market. That’s the world for you. The world that says it believes in democracy except when someone speaks out in a way that the world doesn’t approve of. The world that says that everything is fine right up until the point where it is not fine. The world that says that everyone has a right to say what they think as long as they think like me.

Prashant Bhushan said what he thought about Kashmir three weeks before he was attacked. He said the same thing the day he was attacked and the day AFTER he was attacked. Some people just don’t learn. He must think he lives in a democracy.