She wants to live where she can walk through the streets 'normally'. Vandita Mehta comes from India, where the traffic is chaotic and the temperature too high for walking, something she loves to do. From a young age, she already proclaimed, "I'm not staying here, I'm going to live abroad!"
So it did not surprise her parents that she wanted to go to Europe to study. Besides having relatives in Germany, Europe also attracted her because she feels accepted being queer. Mehta herself came out of the closet when she was 11 years old and did not have an easy time in high school.
But then why Maastricht and not Germany where her relatives live? Mehta wanted a new beginning, independent of her family. Furthermore, the Netherlands was the first country to allow same-sex marriages. "People are accepting it, being queer," she says. She will study Digital Society, which focuses on the impact of digitisation on today's society. Mehta is looking forward to a new beginning. Hence, she has marked that with a bright pink hairdo: new hair, new me.