Any discrimination is dem-e-aning, if not deadly, and I got a taste of it when I was stopped rudely at the ent-rance of a glitzy mall during my time in West Asia. My colour and demeanour weren’t welcoming. My Western colleague, who was acc-ompanying me, had no such problem. Though the country I lived in then off-ered riches, I had to endure the humiliation that was an upshot of the widely practised policy of single Asian males not being all-owed in public places, particularly on holidays. It was not written anywhere, but the differential treatment often surfaced. Apart from my Indianness, my birth religion put me at a disadvantage in a region that still does not allow a Hindu temple. And when an editorial dispute arose at the workplace over a certain news article on Kashmir, I lost the debate even before it began. My views were dismissed because I am an Indian—and a Hindu.