We have been squeezed into a clogged space. That is what it is. But as I am, at least, allow to celebrate my liberty. So I took the opportunity to write about me and my friend's experience, which I believed, has more to do with us as a people than merely the two friends.

I have bought the belief that innocence has no color. I paid a big price for it. So come down here, you won't be spared. Or leave, the leftovers won't be spared either. Otherwise stay and bear it. You will certainly become tougher and tolerant. Patient.

Understanding too. If that is what it takes to identify with the "mainstream", the path is far from right. We ought to have a sight. Maybe for a side. Or a site. Or a sigh. Its OK if we are leaving them today. But its never OK if we still have to live with them till tomorrow.

If this path will lead us to "integrate" with the billion races, the race will be too painful. It is no longer about grazing in the green pasture of conscience and reason. Rather, we are being hurled with the unwanted distortions of conceptions and interpretations.

That's the image. Yours and mine. There is no point complaining that we did not start the fire. The situation is already like reading a bad translation of the Bible. So we failed to deliver the meaning of our existence and us. We are not a mistake.

But we are already mistaken. We are not a blot. But we are already blotted. The slice of unrotten corner is occupied by pretension and their best affordable "goodwill". Of course their financial thirst too. That ground beneath our feet is not safe. We need to negotiate.

We need education to affirm and accept the diversity. Through a designed system we are imposed with thick syllabus that have big chapters on sick caste system and other sicker subjects that were taught in schools and colleges nationwide. Nothing about us. Nothing about our values. There's no trace that reflects about us.

Our coming here and there is a challenge to their domain of understanding. We exist outside them. Outside their geography, history and culture. While our politics is their hands. So the call has been to "integrate" and "assimilate". Our perceived image is that of the man whose frame never seem to relate to any other man they have come across.

We still exist as a big question. Even after paying big money for their caste ridden like small airless and lightless rooms, we were taken in, they said, with "grace", "mercy" and all those sweet butter flabs. I am a little tired already. For I cannot be strong and tough forever. I don't believe in superman.

And my tolerance can no longer be a courage that silently suffers all their ignorance and indifferences. I am tired of putting my rationality's strength to test. Is this a result of our non- affront ability or non- confrontabity?

I must mention another interesting experience where I emerged like the winner after a battle. It was in the hot June of 2005 when I landed in Delhi with my brother and sister for their admission to the University of Delhi. I happen to encounter this good man, Mr.Sharma, who is now the landlord of my folks.

He owned a room that can easily accommodate two people. We paid the security, and the advances. But then he said he wouldn't allow my sister to share the room with my brother. I told him we are brothers and sisters. I even showed him their certificates bearing our dear parents names. He told me his side of the story. He told me that this has been his "practice and tradition".

Besides he told me about "the girls from northeast". I was again in pain and shame. He thought my sister would be just like that too. He narrated stories, news, and all that crass that is designed to deliver the message that our sisters and girls are "cheap". Try to read all the meanings inside that word. That's the picture about our sisters.

That is how we are understood to be. I took my turn to tell him my side of story. I began by telling him that the issue is not about "cheap girls from Manipur or north east". I told him it is rather about the diverse culture and the big gap we are living with. I told him we failed in the negotiation. So we are fed with assumptions that are plastered with deliberate distortions and exaggerations.

I lost my temper in the hours of negotiations for the one room we are looking for. I raised my voice. His sons and daughters thought we were already in the middle of a fight. But he was an old man who has lived enough years to understand.

He was once a student of Hindu College. He is a retired government servant. Besides he owned a house in the heart of the Capital of India. So I told him he ought to be different at least. Not like all the others. So break free. I told him about family.

I told him we are from Manipur, but we come from a family where there are boys and girls, mother and father living together. So my brother and sister have also to stay together again, for all convenience sake too. He asked me silly questions, which I don't think is silly for him and his society. What will my family say? What will my neighbors say? "Actually you know", he said, "I never do that".

In the long heated negotiation, I did not really care for the room anymore. I was taking the pain just to deliver my side of story which seem too new for him. And when the sun has set long ago, unexpectedly, he told me that he is impressed and convinced about my explanations.

So he allowed us to take the room but on a long list of conditions over which I signed my name. Since then, everyday we live to prove and to reveal the immense values of humanity, which we also have been treasuring just like them.

We live everyday to be acceptable and to be accepted like them. We are not supposed to make a mistake. But that's not human. Although that's expected of us. Otherwise we can be down and out anytime.

If this popular belief is what the democratic population is hatching, the whole chapter of democracy, multiculturalism, diversity, secularism, etc., has to be redefined so that we can all come closer to understand its pragmatic aspect.

Culture should act as the filter of our understanding. The present progress did not reflect anything towards that. The myth of superman and his superior culture cannot be a valid standard of acceptance where we are seen as the lesser, weaker, inferior, mortals who are expected to bow to their will.

At such moments, I decried over the artificiality of the collectivity and grow doubtful over the possibility of the diverse unity. We don't seem to be representing ourselves anymore. Rather we represent the fixed image they shaped for us.

This ought to be contested and challenged. With our march into the modern state as "equal citizens", we are bounded by the reality shaping power that is exercised in multiple ways: fixation of the image of a citizen, patterning a popular culture, containment of population movement, etc.

That has been quite successful. Ask anyone if you and I look like one of those from the "mainstream". True, they say we did not look, act, react, or think like them. Mr. Sharma was right.

He is brave enough to say that, " We failed to understand the culture of the people from the north east". There is a missing. There is a gap. These are not isolated examples.

They are everywhere. Worst it lives in their minds. It will not leave.

The space is getting clogged.

Read part I | Part II | Part III