On being Oriya
I am an Oriya. Which is another way of saying that I hail from the south-eastern Indian state of Orissa. You might remember it from news footage of 1999 when a super cyclone killed thousands there. Lately it has jumped in and out of news because of a six-year-old marathon runner, a sicko (with whom I share my second name) who raped a German tourist, and a regular starvation death story that is never far from the surface.