Visit to the Homeland

The recent visit to India had me behaving like the typical NRI, as I sheepishly admit.

Here are the following rookie NRI faux pas I committed:

• As soon as I landed, I commented on the noise levels in the city at 1 am in the morning
• Almost threw up in the vehicle after being treated to road-rash style driving
• Visited the temple – in traditional garb, not sparing Pickwick either
• Managed to infest kid with virus
• Managed to catch the aforementioned virus myself
• Was surprised that the country has not frozen in time and has managed to move on in the years that we were missing
• Commented on how expensive things had become and started sentences with ‘I remember back in my days when…’
• Clicked photographs of absolutely arbit. things which I now found hilarious (a key chain advertising ‘steel balls’ and a billboard for ‘sham publicity’)
• Had the junk food off the streets and marvelled at it, swore it was nothing short of gourmet
• However, did drink only mineral water, in case I caught something
• Caught something anyways
• Accidentally let the accent slip to a friend – and didn’t hear the end of it for the rest of the trip.
• Thoroughly enjoyed the rickshaw ride, and pooh-poohed at the natives who were sputtering at the pollution levels – and went giddy breathing in the concentrated levels of carbon monoxide.
• Caught with the 159 relatives who live in the city, mostly on a single day. Had Pickwick thoroughly confused on the number of tatas and pattis he has. He didn’t mind much though – his equation is simple: the number of relatives are directly proportional to the number if goodies you get. (‘pwesents!’)
• Went to relatives houses with chocolate, and got desi sweets in the bargain - and wondered for the nth time, why on earth they preferred the chocolates.
• Stacked up on the DVDs of our traditional mythological heroes (Hanuman and Ganesha) despite Pickwick not watching more than 60 seconds of anything, unless it’s a song and dance sequence
• Refused to move around in anything but tops, capris and cut-offs, and worked on my ‘tan’
• Went overboard with sending off clothes to the ‘ironwallah’ since I wasn’t the one doing the ironing
• Had to be frequently reminded by relatives to ‘just leave the dishes’ after a meal, I didn’t need to wash up afterwards *bliss*
  
  Future visits will possibly iron out these quirks… although I’m rather hoping I can just get back to being the desi who’s visited by the NR relative.