A stranger in my capital city: Being a Northeastern in Delhi

Spring is Atiya’s (name changed connected request) favourite season. Back successful Manipur, it arrives with pleasant weather, vibrant festivals, and fields bursting into colour. Since childhood, this clip of the twelvemonth for her has meant hours of gazing upon agleam flowers and breathing successful their fragrance. She hasn’t experienced that for 2 years now, ever since she moved to Delhi.

On March 8, she walked to 1 of Delhi’s gardens successful Saket, with a transgender friend, hoping to find that outpouring comfort. What she encountered was conscionable the opposite. She says a radical of boys, betwixt 13 and 16 years, began passing lewd remarks. “They began by calling maine ‘chinki’ (a radical slur utilized connected radical with East Asian features), past went connected to calling maine a enactment idiosyncratic successful Hindi,” says Atiya.