It took just two days for Shaheen Dhadha and her friend Renu to let go of the Civics lessons they learnt for a year or two in school. For them, democracy and free speech could well be just a couple of longwinded words, respectively comprising 11 and 12 alphabets to give weight and significance to a tome called Indian Constitution.

In these two days, they were arrested for posting a status update on Facebook, released, saw Dhadha’s uncle Abdul’s clinic vandalised, underwent persecution, made champions of free speech and liberty by self-claimed champions of both/either, apologised publicly for the comments (and Renu for approving it), and engendered a debate and investigation. On Tuesday, November 20, they finally deactivated the source of all this hyper-drama: their Facebook accounts.

They also swore never to write on Facebook again.

Shaheen to media: “I apologise for the comment. We're scared with this incident. We won't write on Facebook again.”

Abdul Dhadha: “We have great respect for the late Shiv Sena leader. Our intention was not to offend anyone.”

Renu, who had liked friend Shaheen’s post: “It was like a bad dream…I felt traumatised for approving Shaheen’s comment on the social networking website.”

We all know what happens to structures with a weak base. They collapse. The same is true for longwinded words with little strength in their leg. They die. A slow, stinking death each day, in street corners, alleys and localities that have no connection to the pin code New Delhi 110001, where parliament and other big-ticket offices are housed and ministers and officials sit. A bit of goodness in us drying up, before dying out, each day.

Some longwinded words are better left for supermen and women to mug up, and wage wars over in television studios. Most people have too much to do any way to carry the weight and import of long words and upshots of their use and abuse. Shaheen and Renu have to build a career, Abdul Dhadha has to take care of his.

Let taller people take care of those longwinded words. Let the Mumbai trio, and many of us, just carry on with our everyday life. And let this be said without shame, guilt or fright: We are afraid, very afraid. Not just of the rogues on street, but of the trigger-happy cops who think of handcuffs before using their brains to thrash out logic of complaints, and of the deaf and mute government machinery that loves to leave people in the lurch.