Four years in the national capital, apart from all other things I have developed immunity against, I find the word “chinky” extremely offensive and derogatory. I have ignored it while walking past people, thinking they were naïve when they call me “chinky” right to my face. But now, with Nido Tania, the 19-year-old student from Arunachal Pradesh, being beaten to death in the capital, the thought keeps nagging me — was I right in ignoring the name-calling or should I have given it back to them?

The writer fails to understand the gaze and the comments being made about people from the Northeast. Do we look like aliens? she wonders. Representation pic