Dear Express reader, The Olympics began amid pandemic, and for India, the celebrations started early. Mirabai Chanu’s silver medal in weightlifting on Day 1 of the Games opened the country's account. Her journey from a village in the eastern corner of Imphal Valley to the victory podium in Tokyo, is the stuff of fairy tales. On the same day that the girl who carried firewood on her head in village Nongpok Sekmai and the woman who took the burden of a nation’s expectations on her shoulders to Tokyo single-handedly lifted the newspaper’s front page with her incredible achievement, there was another precious freeze-frame of hope. My colleague Sourav Roy Barman reported about a “safe house” in Delhi, managed by the Delhi government’s Social Welfare Department, which was set up following a Supreme Court order in March 2018, directing states and Union Territories to provide shelter to couples facing threats due to their relationship. Here, LGBTQ, inter-faith and other couples who have dared to love in defiance of social convention and family constraint, come from across the country, fleeing the censure of loved ones and others, criminal cases and physical attacks, the pressure of anti-conversion laws and denial of agency, to be with each other in safety. Mirabai’s soaring excellence that has fulfilled its promise, the young couples seeking refuge to love freely and finding it in a two-storey house in the capital city — unfortunately, that’s only half the story. The other half, this week, was made of revelations that India’s government or its agencies may have used Israeli spyware, Pegasus, to mount surveillance on citizens. In the other half of the story, also, were the reports on Income Tax raids, for alleged tax evasion, on the premises of the large and influential media house, Dainik Bhaskar Group. These came after the newspaper carried aggressive reportage on Pegasus, and before that, of the toll taken by Covid’s second wave. The names on the list of those selected as potential targets for surveillance by deploying Pegasus spyware are not of alleged terrorists or criminals, but of members of civil society, political opponents of the ruling regime, journalists (including three from the Indian Express, two current and one former), a member of the Election Commission. Also in the list are phone numbers connected to the woman who alleged sexual harassment against the then serving Chief Justice of India, in April 2019 — he was subsequently cleared by an in-house SC committee and nominated to Rajya Sabha by the BJP-led government. In our editorial on the Pegasus revelations, we said that “the government does not have the option of brazening it out or resorting to conspiracy mongering”. And that “this is about the constitutionally guaranteed right to privacy of individuals, and also about more than that. The Pegasus allegations have cast a shadow on the integrity of institutions.” We pointed out that though this is not the first time a government has been accused of breaching the firewalls laid down in law to snoop on dissidents and rivals, the nature of these allegations is different: “The sophistication of technology now makes possible a level of invasiveness that wasn't possible earlier. The government that is called upon to explain the alleged misuse of spyware is one that wears on its sleeve its intolerance of dissent, and which has sought to criminalise the dissenter by weaponising vaguely worded laws”. Our editorial on the I-T raids on Dainik Bhaskar pointed to the fantasies of siege that may lie at the bottom of both — the government’s strong-arm action against a critical newspaper, and its attempt to brazen out the Pegasus storm. “This government has a syndrome — it paints itself as the besieged even as it wields a strong arm… In this story, the Modi government must always be in battle gear, swatting enemies and Others, slaying ghosts and spectres, never admitting a mistake, or turning the searchlight inwards.” Here’s hoping that the stories of striving for excellence, and of hope and tenderness, become more in number and bigger. And that a day will come when we won’t need to build separate and special “safe houses” for lovers. Because all love will be free and safe. Take care, Vandita | 
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