Popagandhi

You’re Going Back To India

1. Registering at other websites, you find it odd that the marital status dropdown list does not offer “Married” and “Unmarried”.
2. You easily navigate the IRCTC website without problems. You even know what Tatkal and RAC means.
3. More on trains: you refer to station names by their codes. Without doing a search, you skip that step, and look for fares from NJP to BSB, AGC to NDLS.
4. You post in forums, saying things like “don’t mind cheap train class, for short journeys (<12h)”. Everybody on that forum evidently operates on the same timeframe, because they all think it’s a short journey too, having been through 40 hour ones.
5. When looking at train bookings online, when trains aren’t leaving from Varanasi on the day you want to leave, you automatically think: “That’s ok, I’ll leave from Mughal Sarai where there are more trains, it’s only 17km away anyway.”
6. You look at guidebooks’ table of contents and realize you know all the states. Instead of thumbing through page by page, you go straight to Uttar Pradesh for Lucknow, and to Madhya Pradesh for Khajuraho.
7. You overhear Indian students at your school talking about taking advantage of the Jetstar promotion to fly into Kolkata for cheap, then “somehow making it home to Delhi”. You tell them to take the Calcutta Rajdhani at 1615, arriving New Delhi 0950, for Rs2250 (Class 2A).
8. Nepal border crossings now seem about as exotic as MRT interchanges. “It’s easy, you just have to get to Sonauli from Gorakphur..” Just like “to get Ang Mo Kio, stop at Raffles Place”. Yawn.
9. You develop principles towards inanimate concepts, like domestic airlines (i.e. Air India, Jet, Sahara, all scum).
10. Weirdest photo in India (e.g. “please do not pass urine here”) doesn’t make you raise an eyebrow.
11. You read forum discussions eagerly, especially the threads: which shoes did you wear to India? How to keep backpack from smelling disgusting?
12. Your girlfriend says if she doesn’t get a beach, she doesn’t want to go. You panic a bit, then start looking for Spicejet flights to Goa.
13. You start reading fans’ heated debates on where the best puchka chaat is.
14. Your friend is arranging for the guy who was his driver at boarding school to pick you up from New Jalpaiguri station so you don’t have to wait around for a shared jeep to the hills.
15. You call it a “major crisis” when you realize you may not be able to go, after all, because your original partner opted for meaningful employment rather than 2 months with you. Then you perk up and try to armtwist your girlfriend to go instead (”What would you do without me for 2 months, honey? Were you really going to let me go away with another girl? I’ll miss you terribly.. won’t you?”). Continues armtwisting

I will make it there, somehow. India’s calling me ââ�¬â�� there’ve already been 4 Incredible India ads on Discovery Channel Travel and Living in the last 2 hours.. yoga in front of Taj Mahal looks incredibly unrealistic but appealing.

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