Are you visiting India for the first time ? Here are some phrases that you might want to learn to say in Hindi.

“Where’s the restroom?”

“Hi, I’d like to book a pre-paid taxi.”

“Can you take me to Le Meridien?”

“No, thank you. I don’t need an escort for tonight.”

“Wow, you look beautiful. Come on in!”

“Good morning. Your daughter ? Wait, I thought she was the escort!”

“Where are you taking me?”

“What is this priest saying?”

“No! I have a girlfriend in San Jose! Please!”

“It’s not about you, Priya. I find you very attractive. Please don’t cry.”

“Oh god, please don’t stop.”

“So all this time you thought I was asking you if you were taking vitamin pills?”

“Push.”

“I need an admission form for Kindergarten, please.”

“Give me the remote.”

“Just a few more minutes on Twitter, honey. I’ll be right there!”

“Of course you don’t look fat!”

“Okay, I’ll shut up. Just let me in the room!”

(END)

*

(Based on an idea by Simon Rich in “Ant Farm”)

“It’s not an apartment, it’s an abode!”

Welcome to Gurgling Creek Sprawling Meadows Courtyard Burj Al-Bangalore, a truly integrated township enclave featuring 10,000 idyllic, angelic, low-rise, high-tech, upscale, down-to-earth, close-to-nature, self-contained, self-sustainable, contemporary, exemplary, auxiliary, prestigious, almost religious, state-of-the-art, individually crafted, pedestrian-friendly, eco-friendly and vastu-friendly residential nay presidential homes that will leave you positively speechless, as opposed to ordinary communities that leave you negatively speechless.

The top 20 floors are so exclusive, the only water that you can get there is the Alaskan glacier-melted bottled water available for purchase in our fine, on-site, off-beat and under-construction gourmet grocery store.

Directions: Take NH-30 in Bangalore and drive towards Assam, until you hit the village of Udamanakanoorakuchahalli. The last 20 km of your journey might be slightly bumpy, but we think of it as an outdoors experience – a cross between cross-country skiing, paragliding and the motocross.

Amenities: Your wife might seem grumpy, frumpy, lumpy and frankly, anything-but-humpy now – but wait till the power goes off during dinner! First you get to say goodbye to your cricket game and enjoy 20 minutes of refreshing darkness while our 24-hour backup power supply gets warmed up by burning diesel, cloth, newspapers, cement and really, whatever else the watchman can throw in to keep the flame going. Then, say hello to our BDA-approved, patent-pending ‘warm and fuzzy flicker’ backup power! It simulates candlelight that will make your wife look like the woman you could have married if you had as prestigious an address seven years ago!

(And you’ll be glad you brought your 100-250V appliances from the US, because that’s precisely the voltage range of the power supply in Udamanakanoorakuchahalli!)

After dinner, if you need some “privacy” with your wife, you might wish you had spent more and bought one of our apartments with a real bedroom (we warned you!). But don’t worry! Just inches away from the inviting entrance to your apartment is the entrance to your neighbors apartment – convenient to drop your kids off! Just make sure you go back to your own wife house – people tend to get lucky confused in the dark.

Clubhouse: Don’t feel like paragliding back to civilization just to unwind ? Enjoy our all-in-one, integrated, dedicated, artfully curated and carefully aerated chess, carrom, cards, monopoly and library room (books not included)! Had one game too many of teen-patti ? Enjoy yoga, tai chi or just meditate – you won’t be disappointed with our luxuriously-appointed “Rejuvenation space” privately situated under the staircase! (One person at a time, mat not included).

Buy now: How much, you ask ? Well, don’t be offended if our salesmen living space consultants laugh the first time they hear your budget – they are just being good-natured. Once they explain to you the value of your abode, you will agree that a mortgage is not bondage, but a prestigious privilege. And don’t worry if you miss a few payments –we have a team of professional, all-star, all-weather, all-afghan payment assistance advisors to remind you!

And relax – prices go up and prices go down. With most of your past savings, future earnings and wife’s earrings committed to your own abode, all your investments will be consolidated into one large monthly EMI payment. You’re free from thinking about stocks, bonds, gold, mutual funds, livestock, crude oil, fine wine, fixed deposits or even keeping idle cash in your bank!

So stop dreaming and make it happen – plan your work and work your plan! Prioritize, solemnize, actionize and then sodomize! Welcome to Udamanakanoorakuchahalli – the afghans are waiting!

(RIP George Carlin. You are missed.)

What’s puzzling about China’s attempts to access Gmail accounts of human rights activists is this – why go through the trouble? If the Chinese government knows which specific Gmail account to hack into, it must know who the activist is. Why not arrest the naughty fellow for driving too slowly on his bicycle and then ask him if he’d like to eat “Deep-fried vegetable balls in a tangy Manchurian sauce with a hint of irony” for lunch? Et voila.

On the other hand, Google’s search algorithm has no choice but to read through all your boring emails and search queries. It’s trying to become sentient figure out what you’re likely to be searching.

So what are you, dear typical Google user, searching about India ? Google auto-complete knows:

1. Where do Indians live in Houston?

Answer: Here’s a hint: You know Indians are smart, right ? Would we really open our motel with the attached Indian restaurant far from where we all lived ?

And now you know where all the Pakistani and Bangladeshis live too. (You’d think that after all the complaining they do about how terrible it is to have India as a neighbor in South Asia, they’d have the sense to stay at least a few blocks away from us in the US.)

2. How do Indians wipe ?

Answer: Wipe what ? Wipe the floor with your ass ? Ok, yes, many Indians use water and their left hands to clean their ass. Why the left hand ? Because there should be some tradition that’s designed to be easier for left-handers. More importantly, we don’t want to contaminate our asses with the food that happens to be on our right hands.

3. Why Tamils celebrate Diwali?

Answer: It’s a cover for them to test their explosive devices. Tamil Nadu is planning to launch a massive missile strike on North India and then take over the country to make Tamil the national language, causing Pakistan to yearn for the good old days when they didn’t need a translator just to lie to India.

4. What do Indian people look like?

Answer: This question is as puzzling as the one you often hear from single women: “where are all the men?”. Seriously, you have to ask ? What happened to stepping out into the street ? We’re everywhere! (Yes, even in Talinn, Estonia)

5. Indian girls raised by wolves

Answer: If you are looking for matrimony with Indian girls raised by wolves, consider this: “Honey, I’m home!” in English sounds exactly like “Come and chew my head off, you stupid wolf” to an Indian girl raised by wolves (and judging by some of the mails Neo gets, even to many Indian girls who are not raised by wolves). Misunderestimations like that can ruin your entire evening.

6. Why do Indian people shake their head?

Answer: Well if you don’t want us to shake our heads, stop asking us to make you a company website that “looks exactly like this competitor’s website, except completely different.” And yes we’re spiritual but we still haven’t found any “lighter shades of black” for the text on your website.

7. Why are Indian people afraid of dogs?

Answer: Really, it’s the only thing all Indians (even those who now live in Houston) have in common. You’d be scared of dogs too, if you lived in a subcontinent with eighteen languages. Besides, although we all know that the dog doesn’t bite, the dog might not.

8. India and China have a right to pollute the environment

Answer: That’s not even a question! But, thank you for your support as we try to catch up to the per-capita pollution of developed countries.

9. Indian man marries dog

Answer: Now you know why there are so many Indian women (raised by humans or otherwise) looking for grooms on shaadi.com. You also know why we are scared of dogs.

10. How do Hindus get to heaven ?

Answer: Diversification. Sure, it’s fun, simple and bold to worship one God – just like it was to invest all your money in Enron. A better way to invest to simply buy a bit of everything. Yes, polytheism is the “Vanguard Index Fund” of religion. Look closely at a Hindu prayer room and you might even find Jesus (figuratively speaking)!

Just kidding! The truth is, we get to heaven by living like parseltongue-speaking, satan-worshipping pagans all our lives. Then, just moments before our deaths, we convert to Christianity so we can show up in heaven and continue leching at your wife when you visit our ridiculously overpriced Indian restaurant there.

(And when you get there, don’t forget to try our famous deep-fried vegetable balls in Manchurian sauce.)

Here’s your you-know-what:

How long can Neo call himself a “newly returned Indian” ? It’s been almost three years since he moved to India. But – as Neo said recently to one of his engineers who was denied a promotion – it’s not how long you’ve been doing it, but how well you’ve done it that counts. (Also, it helps if you ask for a promotion when the company is profitable.)

So have you earned your promotion from “Newly Returned Indian” to “Natively Resident Indian” ? Here are 20 signs that you’ve successfully made the transition to living in India:

1. You stop getting out of the car at gas stations petrol pumps.

2. You drive next to a BMW 7-series and don’t notice it. Or you didn’t, until your driver gave you a condescending glance.

3. This year’s Diwali holidays won’t catch you by surprise.

4. You stop walking around the office with a coffee mug in your hand.

5. You wear a sweater in “winter”.

6. You stop asking other drivers for their insurance whenever they bump into your car.

7. You’re ok with paying $20,000 for a crappy, cramped car that takes 30 minutes to go from 0-60.

8. You think it’s perfectly natural for English movies to have English subtitles on HBO India.

9. Someone gets fired if it’s 8pm and there isn’t a 4-course meal on the dinner table.

10. You know the best parking spots are determined by shade from the sun and not by distance. Also, you’ve learned to hold the steering wheel using just your pinky finger.

11. The sound of the maid breaking a wine glass does not bother you because you had the foresight to buy a set of 13 wine glasses.

12. You host your kid’s birthday party at McDonald’s.

13. When there’s a cricket game on, you just turn on the TV instead of  reloading cricinfo.com every 10 seconds.

14. You and your spouse are experts in using “missed calls” to communicate. (1 ring = “on my way home”, 2 rings == “running late”, 3 rings == “just pick up the phone you cheapskate!”, …)

15. You stop hauling around your own luggage around at airports and train stations.

16. Your cell phone has a custom ringtone and caller tune. Also, you stop asking for cell phone numbers and start asking for “mobile”, as in “what’s your mobile?”

17. You barely remember what voicemail is.

18. You stop noticing homeless people.

19. When calling customer service, you confidently announce your name as “Gajanand Shrivatsav” without automatically spelling it out like “G as in Government, A as in Apple …”

20. You stop smiling at strangers in the elevator.

(Don’t feel bad if you’re not doing as well as you thought. Neo is right there behind you.)

Here’s your moment of zen: