Tips for NRIs to get back to Indian milieu

One thing I’m not able to comprehend, and of course, put up with, is the behavior of some middle class Indians after coming back from abroad. I’ve always wondered how just one visit can change the perception of a country in which you’ve lived for ages. Its a nice country. We agree. But even they know the value of freedom that they enjoy in India. Just for show off, they’ll start criticizing our practices in each and every moment. You’ll put so much, so much and so much of hypocritical mediocre melodrama only to make an ass of yourself. You might have visited US and UK, but you just can’t camouflage the “bachat-bencho” in you. He just comes out in one way or the other. Here are some tips exclusively crafted for the Indian foreign returns to get back to Indian milieu.

Bargaining: Before visiting US/UK, you were doing amazingly well with resident phrases like benchos and gaandus. After coming back, all of a sudden, you started using fuck, dick and suck even while talking in mother tongue. Why? Just because an Indian roadside vendor honored you with bencho and gaandu, it sounds so downcast and local to you? Then shut the fuck up, stop bargaining and pay him properly in India also (just the way you pay there). You come from a nation where scams account to several million dollars and you bargain for 10 bucks..?? Shame on your NRI rank. Bargaining with roadside vendors and vegetable sellers is not saving money. It’s a euphemistic way of begging. Teri NRI ki.

Calculations: You tell everyone about how cheaply Asians are treated there. But did you tell them about how cheaply you tried to dodge from giving a 5$ tip? Your mind swiftly calculates the value of 5$ (5x48.5 = 242.5) faster than Shakuntala Devi and you realize that you can buy a pair of Poombukar underwear or evade the tip another 39 times and buy an iPhone for yourself. Your 5$ saving won’t bring any fortune to Indian economy. So please behave like a Human Being, everywhere.

News update: When the citizens of US and UK is only not interested in knowing what is happening around, you have utmost and  divine interest in knowing what is going on there. So you sit in the loo with your laptop/tablet on and read Washington post and The Guardian online. And you want to tell the whole world what you read just now. So you compare India with that and put it on your facebook wall. How useless you could get..? Truly, reading a vernacular newspaper will at least tell you whether there’s going to be water scarcity today in your locality which is one hundred times better than reading Washington post and Guardian in the toilet and ending up without water. 

Change in lifestyle: Right from your childhood, you roamed every street and played every game in barefoot. But just because those noble Englishmen pulled the wool over your eyes and incepted the shit of cleanliness and hygiene in your guttery head, you start wearing floaters inside house also as if your palm is coated with Gold. I’m not against Hygiene, but use your brains you goddam lame ass dumb witted shithead moron; if you can live without wearing floaters inside home for 25 years, so can you for the rest of your life.

And the mother of all exasperation is your comparison: You see traffic jam, a public function, a mob, a stray dog, a marriage: you start off. “In UKKaaaaaaaaaay”, “In USSaaaaaaaaaaaaaay” and my mid fingers get an urge to involuntarily foxtrot in front of your face until you shut the holy fuck up. I lose my control when you compare the sophisticated and disciplined western beggars and their Indian counterparts. I really want to say “You better get the fuck out of my country before I kick your ass so hard that you won’t be able to s(h)it and beg”. I can tolerate Navjot Sidhu’s commentary and speech (at least he speaks FOR India). But I can’t stand your comparison. For heaven's sake, spare India. We really can’t take it.

In so many endeavors like Yoga and Ayurveda, the whole world is realizing India’s true potential and here we are, losing our originality and getting influenced from west because of morons like you. You show your Na Raha Indian (NRI) skills in foreign countries only. When you come back to India, just be a proud Indian. Either way, we know that you are Not Required Indian (NRI) only.

Are you smarter than a fifth grader?

Are you smarter than a 5^th grader? No... You are absolutely not. No second thoughts about it. Today’s 5^th graders outsmart us in all the possible ways. Their lifestyle going so exuberant, things around them changing so rapidly, their adaptability to the techno world has amazed me. But on the contrary, I feel they’re really missing something that we all enjoyed. Even though it’s my nostalgia that’s doing the talking here, I refuse to accept that they have a better upbringing than we all had. These are some of the things that I feel, that contemporary kids are really missing.

Mother tongue: I’ve seen kids playing on my street most fluently using the “F” and “B” words. Frankly, I learnt the word fuck in 8^th grade and until high school; I was under the impression that fcuk is misspelt. At that time all I had was the magas, machas, sisyas. I enjoyed it so much. And the best part is my parents never forced me to get into rat race. Today’s urban kids don’t even know the meaning of the most common words in their mother tongue, because their parents insist them to use English everywhere. Just look around and you can find such great parents who attended cockpit parenting classes to give their kids best they deserved, whose kids LOL at their own parents’ vocabulary, at their back.

Nick names: Hucha, Baba, Mowgli, Dicchi, Pirie, cable, motor.. These are some of my friend’s nick names. I still call them with that. But today’s Sandeep is Sandy, Madhav is Maddy and Radha is Randy. I know one of the Harry Potter follower whose name on facebook is Albus Severus Vishnu. Any comments?

Games: All the games we played on road: Cricket, Lagori, Eye-Spy, board games like Business, Snake and Ladder, they’re all not extinct. But they’ve been moved to virtual space. You can find them on android market and iStore. And contemporary kids play them on their iPhones and tablets. Today’s kids are physically non existent and active only virtually.

Gizmos: No words can express how grand the feeling was when I got a PC at home. Today’s boys don’t think PC is cool. Reason: PCs lack mobility. I’ve seen school going kids talking about privacy and other big words. How much we struggled to look at desibabas and the desibabes on a dialup connection? (I hated sound that dial-up modem made). Today’s kids have most easy access to the legendary porn of Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian, and that too at 3G speed.

We had walkman with audio cassettes. They have Cloud. We played super Mario and contra for years. But even Counter Strike is obsolete for them. Technology is advancing so rapidly that Film camera, Landline phones, pagers and typewriters we used for ages are extinct gadgets for gen next kids.

If you closely scrutinize, from games to names, we had a “desi” touch in everything we did. What the contemporary Indians have failed to realize is the essence of this very “desi” flavor. After 30-40 years, the street smart, vigorous kids might just be extinct. And as always, we let things go beyond control and when we realize it, our jaws touch the floor with an expression like Tusshar Kapoor’s in every movie, surprised how it happened. This is a mediocre Indian mentality: Unless our ass is on fire, we never take off.

If you please excuse me, I’ve to get some tips from my nephew to complete angry birds, before he goes offline. Bye for now..!!


Image courtesy: pltprincess.wordpress.com