If you’ve just arrived from the US to attend a traditional Hindu wedding in India, you might be jet-lagged – but that’s not necessarily bad. While the other wedding guests groggily arrive at the wedding venue at 4 a.m., it will be late afternoon according to your body clock – the perfect time to enjoy [...]

Several years ago, during a party at his house in the US, Neo decided to have some fun. He convinced a couple of his white guests to hop on one foot, because that was a customary Indian way to thank the host for a great party. For once, Mrs. Neo found it funny too, except [...]

Neo’s return to India was planned somewhat better than the U.S. invasion of Iraq; his Plan was the product of several months of vigorous lurking on the Return to India forums, hours of detailed discussions with his parents in India, and had been vigorously debated, modified, and then finally adopted by the Neos via a [...]

“Sigh. Kindly order quickly, many customer is waiting” is the official motto of The Association Of Waiters In Indian Restaurants. But don’t be fooled, dear foreigner – food is of critical importance to Indian people. Nothing binds Indians together more, and divides them more, than the belief that their specific type of Indian cuisine is [...]

Dear all, Thank you for the outpouring of sympathy over my death in the recent terror attack. I’m the guy whose remains were never identified, but my car keys were found in the rubble. I wish that I never really died and that I had just decided to drop my car keys in after the [...]

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. [...]

“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, [...]

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 [...]

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, [...]

The 22nd year of a man’s life is very important because it represents the peak of his sexual virility. Which is why Neo will never forget what he was doing during the last minute of his 22nd year of life – he was saying “not tonight dear, I need to finish my Algorithms homework”. (As [...]

But the truly exciting learning opportunities for Neo came on the other six days of the week, when Neo ran amok “played downstairs” in the parking lot of an otherwise un-noteworthy 20-floor Mumbai apartment building. These are some of the exciting thing Neo learned from all those years of unsupervised fun: World War III. Also, [...]

  (Neo couldn’t figure out which set Alcohol belongs to. Probably all three.)

Neo suffered from a rare form of “prostrate cancer”, i.e. the inability to figure out when and how to prostrate himself and perform Namaste. This is the guide he wished he had read then. How to do Namaste (a.k.a. namaskar) There are two major techniques: 1. The I’m-feeling-particularly-humble-today technique: That’s how. Practice it at home. [...]

There is immense business potential in Indian weddings – Neo pitched his startup idea to Mrs. Neo’s rich uncle (before the stock market crashed) during one of Mrs. Neo’s 193 saree changes. Neo calls it the “WTFGO LCD overhead display system”: Problem statement: At any given time, about 80% of the wedding guests and approximately [...]

Not one to shy away from the occasional delusions of grandeur, Neo often gives his “we choose to move to India not because it is easy, but because it is hard” speech to the sundry relatives and friends who visit Neoville. But last weekend, instead of giving him the usual blank expression and heading towards [...]