India, Oct. 8 -- In my 10 years in Delhi-NCR, I have been mocked and abused for the way I look more times than I can count. Someone would say something, I would say something back, and that was usually the end of it. Some days I won, some days I just walked off angry. But it was always one person, and I always knew what to do with one person.

But I had no idea what to do when that one person became a crowd, inside the very residential complex I call home.

It was on the evening of September 7. Not in some far-flung corner of the city but in south Delhi, in a large residential colony off Outer Ring Road, minutes from Greater Kailash 1. This is the part of Delhi known to be upscale and relatively more safe, the part of Delhi free of the bi...