20 symptoms that tell it is time to leave India
Blog: 99 + 1 countries - 13 August 2009
By: merja
1. You don't swear anymore if you step on cow dung.
2. It's July and the monsoon is at its worst but you are still in Goa, playing to be a baba and living in the jungle.
3. You've found a way to make the 10 rupee begging kids to give you money.
4. Explicit carvings in places of worship don't make you want to photograph them anymore.
5. You drink tap water in order to cut expenses.
6. You pray to Hanuman and think it's perfectly normal for Westeners to pray to a monkey god even if they still were Christian yesterday.
7. You manage to spend days without anyone asking you "what is your country" or "what is your job".
8. You sport natural dread locks and think they look cool.
9. Blood red teeth and gums from betel nuts don't seem gross to you anymone. In fact, that's just how your mouth looks like.
10. You've developed immunity to seeing deformed children.
11. The old hippies in Pushkar seem neither tragic nor funny to you anymore.
12. You don't think it's weird when an internet cafe owner strikes a conversation with you about how having sex with horses is good for manhood.
13.You can't remember the last time you had Delhi belly.
14. You can describe filth with the same precision as the Inuits do when decribing snow.
15. You know your way around the old town of Varanasi.
16. You don't freak out if you get bitten by a stray dog as you figure that you probably would have had rabies already if you were meant to have it.
17. Even Indians understand why you are not married.
18. You don't get angry if you see a rape victim's name and photo in a newspaper.
19. You see a green dog and think nothing of it.
20. When you wake up in the middle of the night because a cockroach is crawling up your nose your first thought is not "fuck" but "I'd like some chai".
Want to read more? Ten additional symptoms can be found here.
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