u/Messy-Abnormal-2835

I'm not sure if this is the right subreddit for this topic, so feel free to delete this post if it's not.

Growing up, I moved often between Europe and India, and I remember when I was younger, most people actually seemed to like Indians or feel neutral about them. Many of our neighbours were curious to get to know us and learn about our culture.

Don't get me wrong, there was definitely racism against Indians even then (the usual nerdy stereotype, curry smell, dirty etc.), but the difference between then and now I feel is that they were mostly unserious, and most people weren't threatened by us or interested in kicking us out of the country.

Nowadays, I go down the street and I see many people look elsewhere when I'm in their sight. I used to tell myself that I was just overthinking it because of all of the comments online, but after a couple of incidents, I no longer believe that to be true.

Two years ago in Portugal, we had a man come up to my family while we were waiting at a bus stop and say "We are from the Goan liberation army and we'll eat Modi's cow". In my head I was like sure go ahead, no one's gonna stop ya.

A few months ago, I was trying to buy tickets for the train from the ticket machine and a security officer came and helped me out. We were both speaking in one of the local languages. Afterwards, my sibling told me that while I was busy purchasing the tickets, the officer had said something along the lines of "I bet you don't have this in your country".

Occasionally, old people in public transport will greet other passengers but when they see me, they avoid.

Even my friends will mention things like Indians stealing jobs, Indian street food, cow poop, and talk about how annoying the stereotypical Indian accent is (I don't have the stereotypical accent btw) in front of me.

These are just a handful of examples.

Anyway, I'm just tired of this.

EDIT: Modified a few wordings.