“No one accepts us for who we are--Indians. They are more busy calling us Chinese or in slang ‘chinki’ and forget that we are their country people. And now with the COVID pandemic things have become worse,” says Chavini Pisi, a 27-year-old woman from Meghalaya currently stuck in Delhi, the city where she works. Chavini wasn’t able to go back to Meghalaya before the lockdown started and was stuck in Delhi and now with the unlock phase, she still cannot go to her hometown as her office has opened again. 

“All my life people have made fun of me but never did I ever think that people will spit on me for something that  I am not.” She talked about her concerns regarding the increasing intolerance against the Northeastern residents, especially post the outbreak of coronavirus. “We have always been looked upon as outsiders and been a butt of people’s jokes, but I had learnt to deal with that. But a few days ago, when I had gone to buy groceries, a man on the road spat on me saying, “Aye Coronavirus, go away; Aye Chinese go away.” I was shocked and disgusted and hurt! Is it so difficult for people to differentiate? I am equally Indian as them, I am equally human as them and the coronavirus would be equally dangerous for me, if I am ever to get infected by it, then why do people think I am the one who brought the virus to our country??

During the lockdown, I’ve experienced the worst 2 months of my life. My neighbours turned against me in spite of knowing that I am from Meghalaya. Whenever I would go out of the house to get groceries, someone or the other would click a picture or me and share it on the WhatsApp group saying - BEWARE!! Coronavirus is out of her house.

And then there are other kinds of people who have stereotyped the northeastern girls to be professional harlots. A man from our society, who is supposedly a ‘Shareef Aadmi’, DMed me on WhatsApp and said he’d protect me from the fellow residents if I shared a few of my pictures with him. Is this the way someone should treat another human being? 

Many of my friends who are away from their hometown in different cities are also facing similar discrimination. Another friend was hit by his neighbour because one resident who stayed three blocks away tested positive. They forced my friend to get tested and once his results showed negative, that was when they left him alone and that too just for the time being threatening him with dire consequences if the virus spread or anyone died of COVID. 

Now when everyone has complained to my landlady who stays in Bangalore herself, she is pressurising me to find another place as the residents wouldn’t stop complaining about me and the threat they think I pose to them. When I told my landlady about the things fellow residents have been doing to me, she told me that the ‘Shareef Aadmi’ was the one who persistently had been calling her to get me out of the society soon. She too knew the residents wouldn’t let me live in peace and begged me to find another place so that we both could have our own calm. But where would I get a place with so little time in hand? 

What has happened to humanity in our country? Why are people acting so savage and why can’t people just be kind to others for once??” wonders Chavini.