31. You always refer to Indian cities by their new, post-colonial names. Yes, even Thiruvananthapuram.
32. You spend an evening watching the sun set over Manali with Russian-Free-Jazz-pioneer-turned-full-time-hippie Viktor Lukin who's trying to tell you your future using numerology. Strangely enough, he keeps getting all numbers mixed up or forgetting them completely. Must be something in the water.
33. Of the three main mango juices you only drink Frooti, because Maaza and Slice are owned by evil multinational corporations (Coca-Cola and Pepsi, respectively) that are raping the earth of it’s love and resources. You also think that Limca > Sprite and Thumbs Up > Coke, regardless of the fact they're essentially identical products manufactured by the same company.
34. You consider Ravi Shankar a sell-out.
35. Octopussy has your become favourite Bond-movie, but you never miss an opportunity to nitpick about it's errors (like the fact that Bond flies to Delhi, yet we see the plane landing over the Taj Mahal, Agra, and when he arrives in India he's suddenly in Udaipur, not Delhi. WTF?).
36. You can quite accurately determine the quality of a chillum just by looking through it. This endowment usually goes hand in hand with the ability to comprehend the meaning behind the lyrics of Jefferson Airplane's "Hey Frederick".
37. Continuously using the phrase “Real India” when conversing with other travellers (especially if they‘re less experienced than you), and it's always some place they haven't been to and never mentioned in the guidebooks. Also take pride in the fact that you never disinfect your hands, have stopped using malaria medicine, wash your clothes in a bathroom sink, walk around barefoot and complain constantly about how India has changed for the worse (implying that it's economic boom, increase in living standards and influx of foreign tourism has diminished it's "realness").
38. You’ve adopted the following local traits: You never pay any attention to the traffic when crossing a street; wobble your head when talking to locals; understand and follow cricket; are able to recognise “India-virgins” from a mile away (“look at that insecure walk, you can tell he has just arrived“); pronounce “bus stop” as “bus-is-stop" and never buy a full pack of cigarettes, only a few separate ones (either beedies or Gold Flake).
39. Having reached astronomical heights of pretentiousness, you rename yourself after a Hindu God. This has actually happened! I was sitting by a tea stall in Delhi when a dreadlocked backpacker and his hippie girlfried, who hadn't shaved her armpits in years, sat opposite to me. When I asked the guy for his name this happened:
"My name is Ganesh."
"Your name's Ganesh?" "Yeah."
"Is that the name on your passport?"
"No, Ganesh is my real name."
What an asshole. This is why we can't have nice things!
40. When a two eager young Indian guys in Pahar Ganj, Delhi, constantly keep asking you what sex with a blonde girl is like, you amuse yourself by finally answering: "Let me put it this way, you guys wouldn't last twenty seconds", and watch their jaws drop in disbelief.
41. The police catch you drunk driving a rickshaw, yet you manage to talk your way out of it without paying any baksheesh.
42. India aside, the only country that you have visited in the last 4 years is Nepal where you go every six months to renew your visa with a week long side trip to Pokhara.
Entry contributed by Toxic Waste Man, a.k.a Aleksi.
I've never had sex with a blonde girl.
You can read the 20 original symptoms
hereand the 10 additional symptoms
here.
