Since childhood I always used to call myself an Indian and never a Bihari. The consciousness of being Bihari has been missing since the childhood and still by and large majority of the natives lacks this consciousness and are strongly conscious  of being an Indian. This is a good thing but being conscious about your state, its culture, its rich history and so on adds more beauty and uniqueness to your consciousness of being an Indian.

India is a land of diversity. I came to know about the rich diversity of Bihar from food culture to regional dialects to rich history to the unique pronunciation of hindi letters such as we write vishesh, but pronunce it as vises, same goes with the Ghoda pronunced as Ghora, only when i stepped out of my Bihar and entered Delhi for my Undergraduate studies. 

Interacting with somebody was always a great cultural shock because the second person will most of the time reply “oh, You are Bihari ”. First time in my life I was countering these replies which were used as a derogatory slang to humiliate and make me feel ashamed about the backwardness of my state in terms of education, literacy, lifestyle and so on. These experiences pushed me to ask few questions : 

Were they doing it deliberately ? or 

Has it become the part of their normal socio culture things ? 

I don't know what could be the possible logical answer. 

Indeed Bihar is backward, highly engrained with caste politics but it doesn't mean that the entire Bihar should be defamed and those students who aspire to study in the top University of India, work hard and secure position should be subjected to deliberate humiliation. We deserve self respect for being a Bihari and refuse to accept the humiliating treatment of our own identity.  

Gradually over the time I started acknowledging my identity of being Bihari and while interacting with somebody  would introduce myself openly that “ I am Bihari ” with full Bihari accent, thus giving no space to the second person to react and reply “ oh, you are Bihari ”. 

I would like to extend my gratitude to all those who instilled in me the consciousness of being a Bihari, now “ Ham Bihari aur Bhartiye done hai ”. “Ab Bihar mein ee ba ”   

At last but not the least, I would like to end my writing with the Maharani web series dialogue - “Bihar is not a state, it's a state of mind ”.