Warning: - No offence is meant to anyone by what follows. If you need to complain about what you are about to read, please discuss with my grandfather at AhoBila Math temple, Chembur, at 9am in the morning.

1. Wearing the ’sacred thread’ and praying to it, thrice a day, made you a good boy, no matter how big an excuse for existence you were the rest of the day.
2. If you ate non vegetarian food, you automatically were a villan in the eyes of everyone remotely concerned.
3. Everyone who met you at South Indian weddings went ‘ Oh, when I last met you, you were sooooooooooooooooooo smaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaal!How big you have grown!’, even if they met you last about six months ago
4. It was a crime to talk to girls, except if the girl was your sister, which, even that in extreme cases, was frowned upon.
5. No matter how stupid it sounds, a South Indian guy always went out to buy a ‘dress’ for himself.
6. If a south Indian guy talked to a girl, everyone at the local temple, including the beggars outside, knew about it.
7. Scoring a 93% aggregate in the school Unit test was not an achievement, because your grandmom’s cousin’s friend’s elder sister’s husband’s younger brother’s grandson’s twin sister scored more than you in the same exam, even if she gave the exam in some remote town in Pondicherry.
8. If a girl called home, no matter how urgent or serious the need of the call was, you had an affair with the girl who had called.
10.If a girl came home, and she by some chance happened to be good looking, either you were making out, or you were going to run away with her at the next oppurtunity.
9. Dosa, Idli and Upma were the only three snacks available on Planet Earth.
10. At weddings, it was always necessary to meet fifteen balding uncles, who obviously, had seen you when you were in your nappies.
11. If you lived in a building full of South Indians, you practically had plenty of ‘mothers’ and ‘fathers’ who would be overly concerned with where you went, why you went, how you went etc, no matter if their own children were the Devil’s incarnation.
12. If a girl wore a sleeveless top, she was of loose character.
13. If a girl wore a short skirt, no one would ever marry her.
14. If a girl came home after 8.30pm, she was having an affair.
15. If you had a vehicle and you drove it at 35kph, you were a very rash driver, even if you were driving on Mumbai - Pune Expressway.
16. 85% plus in 10th, Science, Engineering/Medical, and going to ‘States’ to study was the education pattern of every South Indian child.
17. If you worked in McDonalds as a waiter, and drove to work everyday, the fact that you worked in McDonalds would be conveniently forgotten, while bragging about you to fellow South Indian folks back home.
18. A guy who is from the ‘States’ was a ’suitable’ groom, even if he smoked, was a drunkard and slept with seven different women every week.
19. If any South Indian ‘elder’ ever read this, I will remain a bachelor all my life.

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