‘MY FAME BECAME ANOTHER BOX I WAS BEING FORCED INTO’

You’re from the north-west? I know someone from the north-west. Her name is Pinky Singh. You know her? No?!! Pinky Singh!!!”

Merenla Imsong’s YouTube video, ‘Presumptuous Chinky assumes the North Indian Way’, was a take on the absurd questions she faced as a youngster from Nagaland studying in Delhi and later working as a fashion designer in Mumbai.

“People didn’t seem to know that Nagaland was a state; they routinely confused it with other north-eastern states,” says Imsong, 29. “My mom is the queen of sarcasm. She will make a hilarious comment with a straight face and leave the room. I got my funny streak from her. Also I did some amateur theatre, so the expressions in the video also came to me naturally.”

What really surprised Imsong was the comments section.

“It turned into a battlefield of people supporting me and people criticising my way of addressing the issue,” she says. “What I had meant as a joke became a polit- ical sketch for a lot of people. Some got angry, some said thank you. Someone said it was a nice way ‘to get back’! I just wanted to have some fun.”

My fame became another box I was being forced into, she adds. “I worry that it has made me more cautious. But I am glad that it has made me more tolerant. I remember when I was in school, I had a south Indian teacher. I now realise that I also didn’t know exactly which state she came from. Yes, borders around some places can get blurry. But you should at least know that Nagaland IS a state.”