Tourist guide to India

[Guest guest]

This guide has been hand-crafted from the finest electrons for your reading

pleasure. "Why?" you ask? Er... supply grumble mumble demand. So here is the

guide to India.

 

India is known by various names, ranging from The Jewel In The Crown to The

Land of Snake Charmers. However, most Indians would be surprised to hear

either of these things, because they consider India as being the place in

which they live, and which fits neither of these descriptions at all.

 

A famous guy whose name is not important (chiefly because I cannot remember

it) once said in a weak moment, "Everything that you hear about India is

true. The opposite is also true." What an idiot... Anyway, this probably may

go a long way towards explaining why tourists in India (that includes YOU)

usually feel like they do not know whether to laugh or to cry. Especially

when the natives keep laughing at you most of the time.

 

Location

========

Unless it moved recently, India is located on the southern edge of Asia,

which is rather neat because we are right next to the Indian ocean too.

Would have confused people otherwise, I mean, imagine finding the Indian

ocean there and seeing India somewhere on the other side of the world. Well,

luckily for map-makers, that isn't the case unlike for instance,

_a_certain_European_colonial_power_ _whom_we_shall_not_identify_by_name, who

is not located anywhere near French Samoa.

 

How to get there

================

Getting there is half the fun, especially if you fly Air India (A.I.), the

national airline. The domestic airline is Indian Airlines (I.A.), which is

rather clever because they can re-use the same letters in the acronym.

 

The conventional way to enter the country is through one of the

inter-national airports which are in Bombay, New Delhi, Calcutta and Madras.

Most people who land there are headed somewhere else in India, which might

make you wonder why the airports were set up there in the first place, but

that's the way it is, and remember that you are just a measly tourist and

who the heck are you to tell us where to put our airports anyway? And oh

yeah, I was asked to welcome you, even if I thought you were a poor, sad

excuse for a human as long as you were fool enough to give us your money.

So, Welcome to India.

 

For the more adventurous minded tourist, there are other ways of entering

the country, such as first going to Pakistan and crossing the border into

Kashmir. Should you choose this route, the Pakistani government provides you

(at no extra charge) with the latest in US Army surplus AK-47s as an

incentive. (Offer good till supplies last. The Government of Pakistan

reserves the right to substitute other weaponry without prior notice.) While

this means you can get an all-expenses-paid to the Kashmir Valley, the catch

is that it is very difficult to get travel insurance on this trip. Something

to do with getting killed or something. I dunno.

 

You can choose to travel to Bangladesh first, which also provides free

infiltration services, particularly into the Northeastern parts of India,

but I hear that tourism is difficult in those regions. The natives in

Northeastern India don't speak English anymore, since they have discovered

that assault rifles are a more lucid way of getting the point across to

dumb-folks illegally crossing over the border from Bangladesh. Besides, this

way they don't have to worry about dangling participles and split

infinitives, always a problem when you try to communicate in English. They

are reported to ask questions later, a point which is of little comfort to

anyone who's been shot first. Besides, you would first have to go to

Bangladesh, and who wants to do that.

 

Finally, you could take the boat ride from Sri Lanka to India, but the catch

is that you won't be able to see much of India because you will be sent back

on the next boat back to Sri Lanka. Not much of India you can see in an

afternoon.

 

Indian hospitality

==================

Foreign tourists are welcome in most parts of India, and are referred to as

"gora firang", which is Indian for "foolish foreigner with diarrhea and way

too much money". Where does the diarrhea come into the picture? Well I'd

rather not go into the details, you know well enough where it does. If you

want to know where you got it from, I would say the water, or the food, or

the air. Of course the real reason is that you are a wimpy foreigner whose

stomach isn't strong enough to take care of itself, and we are just too damn

polite to say so on your face. The least you could do is to quit whining.

Thank you.

 

People

======

First of all, there are a lot of them. Get used to it. There are so many of

them that India's primary contribution to the sociological spectrum is the

mob. They come in various shapes and sizes, primarily in two sexes (stop

sniggering, sex in this context means gender), and range from fair to dark.

Most people of marriageable age can be identified easily because they turn a

distinctive colour best described as "wheatish complexioned".

 

Indian names are difficult to pronounce, which is why most Indian kids have

nicknames like Babloo. If you forget someone's name, I would advise you

against referring to him as Whatsisface, simply because there may be some

guy within earshot called Chandragupta Harshavardhana Whatsisface and he may

think you are talking about him. If you have to, at least say Mr.

Whatsisface, and pray that there isn't a woman around called Mrs.

Whatsisface. Better still, keep your big mouth shut, but this may be

impossible to do if you are an American tourist.

 

Among the millions of unknown and unimportant Indians are some well-known

and unimportant ones, such as:

 

Amitabh Bachchan - Tall actor and alleged philanderer

Rajesh Khanna - alleged actor and wife-deserter

Dimple Kapadia - alleged actress and deserted-wife

Pooja Bedi - bimbo

Sunjay Dutt - alleged actor II and suspected terrorist

N. T. Rama Rao - alleged regional actor and skilled cross-dresser

Ravi Shankar - Indian sitar player who prefers to live in America

Zakir Hussain - hairy tabla player who prefers to live in California

Rajiv Gandhi - corrupt ex-Prime Minister-1, Dead for good and Resting in

Pieces.

V. P. Singh - crooked ex-Prime Minister-2, Brain Dead.

 

This list has only included a few people. There are about nine hundred

million more, so your chance of meeting any of the above in India is pretty

slim. Still, we gave you a little background on them; just in case you ran

across one of them so you wouldn't look like a darned fool. Probably too

late for that, but at least now it won't be our fault.

 

Places

======

There are thousands of places you could go to in India, and some of them are

even interesting to go to.

 

The Taj Mahal: This is well-known around the world as one of the most

hyper-hyped tourist places of all time. Most foreign tourists seem to think

that it is a mosque, but they are wrong (typical, isn't it!). It is a tomb,

built to bury a queen. After she died of course.

 

The Red Fort: Well, it is a fort, and um... it is kind of red, but I guess

you expected that anyway. It is located in Old Delhi, to which I guess you

can go from New Delhi by doing some nifty time-travel. Heh heh, no actually

that's just a joke and you are supposed to laugh now. Thanks. You don't need

a time-machine, you can just take a taxi.

 

Corbett National Park: Basically a jungle, but we figure you would pay good

money to go stay there (and get out of our hair for a while) if we told you

that you could see some tigers there. Kind of ironic, since Corbett was

known for killing tigers.

 

Kashmir: Snow-capped mountains, serene lakes, quaint ageless traditions, and

beautiful valleys which are filled with the sounds of staccato gunfire.

Stroll through centuries old marketplaces, touch lovingly handcrafted local

ware, and witness a real-life kidnapping by local terrorists, or get caught

in an exciting cross-fire between the army and the terrorists. Look up at

the clear blue skies at just the right moment (timing is everything) and you

may see a rocket bomb arcing gracefully through the air. Unparalleled scenic

beauty and violent armed civil unrest, a combination you would be hard

pressed to find elsewhere in the world.

 

Rajasthan: Desert, mostly, but the kings built palaces there with a keen eye

on the twentieth century tourist industry. They also have an annual

camel-trading show, where a lot of tourists like to get into the way of

local camel traders trying to run their business. Still, if sand turns you

on, you'll find plenty of it here.

 

Other Stuff: Not to be outdone, there are hundreds of places with really no

inherent tourist appeal which would love to have you visit them and support

the local skin-the-tourist industry.

 

 

Languages

=========

English is spoken widely, but understood somewhat less widely. Exceptions

are regions such as Assam (see above) and Kashmir, where the locals,

presumably disenchanted with the peculiarities of English grammar, have made

creative use of alternative ways to express themselves.

 

Sometimes you may come across signs which seem to be English, but make no

sense anyway... Such as: "Xerox photocopy done in Telugu, Kannada and

English." or: "Limca - The zero, bacteria drink"

 

There are several hundred local languages, none of which you have any hope

of understanding, so let us just forget that for now.

 

Politics

========

India follows a parliamentary democratic form of government, in which the

people get together every five years and decide which party they hate the

least, and this party gets to rule until the people find a party they hate

even less. In this respect, India is just like any other democracy. The

losing party usually vanishes, breaks up, merges with the winning party,

figures out which ideology would get them the most votes and reconvenes with

a different name in time for the next election.

 

Sports

======

The most popular sport is cricket, which the Indians picked up from the

British. There are several versions, such as "tennis ball cricket", "street

cricket", "hostel corridor cricket", "half pitch cricket", "one day cricket"

and "that's not cricket". The fundamental rules are common across these

various forms.

 

There are two sides, one out in the field and one in. - Each man that's in

the side that's in goes out and when he's out he comes back in and the next

man goes in, (that is out) until he's out at which point he comes in. - When

all the men in the side that's in are out, the side that's out comes in and

the side that's been in goes out and tries to get those coming in out.

 

Sometimes you get men still in and not out! When both sides have been in and

out including the not outs, that's the end of the game. Unless the game is

washed out, in which case no one gets to go in, but everyone stays inside

and no one gets out.

 

The bowling takes place in overs, in which the bowler can hurl the ball as

fast as he can at the wicket to get the batsman out, and the batsman who is

in tries to hit the ball as hard as he can. They seem to enjoy this sort of

thing, though no one knows how the ball feels about it all. An over lasts

six balls, after which the over is over, unless it is Australian, when there

are two more balls before the over is really over.

 

Each match takes five days. It takes this long because they need time to

figure out who is in, i.e. out, and who is out, i.e. in, and who is not out,

but not yet in. There are one-day matches, which oddly are usually played at

night these days (which may make you wonder why they don't call them

one-night matches), in which everyone is in a hurry to get in and stay out.

 

Hockey, basketball and soccer also claim that they are popular, but only

among the people who play them. These people like these sports when there is

no cricket to watch.

 

No I didn't write it, I did edit it a bit,

-Ava

 

 

but here is who did...

 

Prem's Tourist Guide To India

Berkeley, December 21, 1994

 

Bouquets/Brickbats to: prem (AT) prem (DOT) lbl.gov

 

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