15 Annoying Things Foreigners Really Need To Get Right About India
15 Annoying Things Foreigners Really Need To Get Right About India
1. Let's start with the basics. Calling a drink “chai tea” is the same as calling steak “beef meat”.
2. Naan is literally another word for bread – so again, saying “naan bread” means you're saying "bread bread"
3. The way you spell "Gandhi" is wrong.
In fact, the way you say it – "ghandi" – sounds a lot like the Hindi word for "dirty". So you might want to stop that.
4. Hindu is not a language. No one speaks it. Just like no one speaks Muslim or Christian or Buddhist
5. And speaking of languages, English is one of our official languages – no need to act so surprised if you hear us speaking it better than you
6. We are not all, in fact, call centre workers or owners of convenience stores
7. Cricket is not some bootleg, made-up version of baseball.
8. All the food in India is not curry.
9. And there’s no such thing as chicken tikki masala
10. If you've ever been here, you'd know that India isn’t all dirty, smelly, and always crowded.
11. We are not all born with every yoga position seared into our memory.
12. Raj's accent from The Big Bang Theory is not an accurate representation of every Indian's accent.
13. Stop thinking that Indians are technologically challenged or ignorant
We have more internet users than there are humans in the U.S.
14. Our life is nothing like Slumdog Millionaire.
Not once have I ridden on top of a train.
15. And finally, we are not exotic, not irrelevant, and definitely not an ignorable dot. We're one of the biggest populations in the world, and a force to be goddamned reckoned with.
