"The journey goes on until I make it," vows Borkung Hrangkhawl, a freestyle rapper from Tripura who has lived in Delhi for seven years, in this video released last July.  Days after Nido Tania, a student from Arunachal Pradesh, was killed by shopkeepers in the national capital, and goons beat up two Manipuri women for no apparent reason, the musician – who is also known as BK – remembered the time he was stabbed with a penknife.

In Mumbai to participate in Cultures of Peace, a festival celebrating the North East, BK said that his debut album, 'The Journey’, describes problems faced people from North Eastern India both in the region and on the "mainland".

On the sidelines of the festival, he spoke of discrimination he faced in daily life, and how he deals with it. He regularly faces taunts, and once, the year he arrived in Delhi, he was attacked.

“Two men came up to me and poked me twice,” he said, self-effacingly. These men, local thugs, had stabbed him with a pen knife.  “My life flashed before my eyes,” BK said, “just like in the movies.”

The wound was not severe because he twisted away in time. He sank down to the pavement. The two would-be thieves searched his pockets. They found nothing valuable on him, not even a phone.

As BK sat dazed on the ground, the two stood over him and debated their next move. “I could hear them arguing about whether or not to kill me,” BK said. “I pleaded with them not to.”

After some discussion, the two agreed it would be best to simply leave BK there instead of facing the certainty of jail time if they murdered him. They helped BK to his feet and asked him to check if he was hurt. BK noticed only then that he “had a small hole” in his chest. His shirt was red with blood. He asked his attackers what to do.

They told him to put a Band-Aid on it and it would be fine. BK said he had no money to buy one. One of them extracted a Rs 10 note from his wallet and handed it to him. “Since I stayed nearby, I asked them if they would attack me if I ever came back that way," he recalled. "They said they wouldn’t because they knew me now.” In fact, they told BK to call them if he ever landed in any trouble.

“It’s not their fault,” he said. “Mainland people act violently against people from the North East because they do not know or understand our culture. Once they know more about us, they will not be as afraid anymore.” This will happen, the musician said, only if people from various Indian regions interact more with each other.

It isn't as though many parts of North East India are completely accepting of people who aren't like them, BK noted. BK’s father, Bijoy Hrangkhawl, is an MLA from Tripura who for ten years led his party, the Tripura National Volunteers, in a violent insurgency against the Bengalis in his state. In 1988, the party signed a peace treaty. Hrangkhawl has now softened his stance against Bengalis and says they may stay if they learn the local language of Kokborok.

BK, however, has adopted a different strategy. “That’s why I write this message of peace in my songs, in the hope that the people who listen to it will come to change their minds," he said. "I want to travel across India with my team of musicians. That’s the only way people can know that we are not a threat to them.”