Shillong, 1979. I was in the 6th standard. That was the first time I was called a “dkhar” or an “outsider”. It was a slur. Not much has been written about the “anti-outsider” movement in Meghalaya, a spillover of the Assam agitation that was a mass movement against illegal migrants from Bangladesh. Whatever the motives were, I suffered humiliation. Hundreds of others suffered a fate worse than mine. What continued was a decade of ethnic cleansing.