9 Things That Indians All Over The World Are Forever Explaining To Their Friends!

Going to an international school for the most part is a privilege my kids are lucky to have. They adore their friends, who are from different parts of the world, and the number of languages you hear during drop-off are astounding! But occasionally, you can’t help but sit back and marvel at how Rudyard Kipling and Danny Boyle have ruined India for an average European. Here’s a sample:

Mum-Zilla

I’m a newbie NRI mum. Please note, I said NRI mum, not just NRI. And there’s a world of difference between the two. Being an NRI has turned me, a (usually) sane human being into a paranoid Mum-zilla from hell during my visit back to the homeland. I’m not proud of some of the things I did. So here’s the story of my comedy of errors. Laugh, enjoy. I won’t mind you making (a little) fun of me!

Read on...

Rookie Mistakes - 2

Having experienced Kochi on foot and thanking God that I have lived to regret it, last week
I decided to listen to Dad and quietly take the car when we decided to go shopping.
Now by 'taking the car', I do not mean driving it myself, although the Government of India has foolishly granted me a permit to do so for the past decade or so. I meant assigning Dad or he-of-infinite-patience-when-it-comes-to-his-daughter the chauffeur duties for the day while mum and self (and brats in tow) swan in and out of shops. We left punctually at the designated hour (i.e. exactly half an hour after it was agreed we would leave), and this time when Dad headed towards to car park he found me right along with him, matching stride for stride. Right. so far so good. As we settle ourselves into the car, I see dad quickly reverse out of the car park after strapping himself in. "whoa! Hang on Dad!!" I say - "I haven't strapped myself in - and neither have the kids!" Dad, for the nth time in this very brief trip looks at me like I'm a raving loon, visibly composes himself before answering, calmly, "It's not compulsory for the passengers to wear seat belts here. And the back seats don't have any seat belts."
I look around incredulously at the back. The seats are bereft of any anchoring devices. The kids are grinning away bouncing about like helium-filled balloons, rejoicing at the feeling of not being tethered down. As we continue backing out of the driveway - this time in a vehicle rather than on foot, I feel no safer and hang on gingerly to the door handle.
No sooner have we emerged out of the apartment complex (after what I though was far too much aggressive horn-tooting by dad), we nearly ram into an SUV which, from what I could gather thought we were involved in a fun game of Chicken. I roll down my window to give the guy a sound talking to - only to realise I was talking to thin air - Chicken man was continuing his dangerous trip down to road determined to visit the A & E by the end of the hour.
Dad meanwhile continued down to road, unaffected by our brush with death, merrily leaning away on the horn - apparently this was how vehicles communicated with each other here - a short 'parp' to denote mild annoyance at how you're driving to a longer 'paaaaaaarrrp' to denote - 'really now, you're being a twat' to a staccato burst of 'pip-paarp-pap-parp' to denote 'watch out! I'm a huge truck with no rearview mirrors about to burst forth from a blind turn at break-neck speed' to a myriad of other complex signals.
I seem to have learnt driving from a totally different rulebook because the left indicator here somehow communicated to two-wheelers behind you that this was the time to overtake the vehicle from the left and a right indicator - well, I don't know what it meant because it seemed to have no effect on the surrounding traffic.
My favourites are the roundabouts- manned by a traffic constable. Where if you choose to go clockwise when you want to turn right, The constable looks at you in askance like you didn't know what you were doing. It's obvious to anyone with half as much brains as the rotund constable that the shortest route in a roundabout if you wanted to go right was, of course anti-clockwise. And that is what one is expected to do. None of this new fangled nonsense about uni-directional traffic for our intrepid Kochi Konstable.
I now realise why almost all vehicles in India have an image of God hanging from the rear view mirror or firmly pasted to the dashboard (including Dad's car which now incidentally has permanent imprints left by my fingertips on the dashboard) - after all one never knows if one is ever going to ever return to your loved ones once you go out into the streets (on foot or by car) of Kochi. 

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.