Someone in the shivered hubbub around the Shaheen Bagh picket did bring up the mention of Sharmila Irom of Manipur and how long she fought against the AFSPA before she pulled out the feeder tubes, ended the hunger strike and proceeded with her life. Sixteen years she battled. Irom is now off stage; AFSPA remains.

The state is powerful, in time it breaks the will and bones of those that stand in its way. But the thing about protests is not always whether they have surmounted, but often just that they have been waged.

Shaheen Bagh has been out trying to beat back the CAA-NRC regime 16 days. A mere 16 days, it might well be said, and on a far begotten precinct of Delhi, like a banner hoisted in a recess the rulers of the realm couldn’t much care about.

Shaheen Bagh is a warren best lost on those who do not inhabit it — an overcrowded, low-income barracoon wedged between the cacophony of Jamia Millia Islamia and the putrescent rubbish-lumped Yamuna bank. Besides, and probably chiefly, its populace is predominantly Muslim, the kind who famously can be recognised by their clothes; their protest is nothing to bother with. Whiners. Moaners. Outliers. Let them be. Before it became a daily dateline a fortnight ago, Shaheen Bagh was not a location anybody picked out.

But here’s why Shaheen Bagh has begun to beep and flash on locator maps. Here’s why it has morphed from forsaken ugly duckling to local celebrity. Shaheen Bagh has been out saying something for 16 days this biting-cloying winter, and it isn’t stopping to say: NO CAA!

Shaheen Bagh has now become the longest sustained protest of this chapter.