People don’t have to be NRIs to be intelligent & have strong opinions on India. Some of our readers are NRIs. Some are not. But, many of them are aware, well-read & have exposure to other cultures. If that scares you, too bad.

You seem to think there’s something profoundly heroic in accepting mediocrity from fellow Indians & Indian businesses. Such an attitude will bring about stagnation, so there’s no point in you clucking self-righteously at us.

You also seem to be one of those ultra touchy in-duh-viduals who can’t handle any criticism of anything remotely Indian. Your inability to handle my views is not my problem. I don’t need your permission to air my views in my blog. You know, that’s called a “Fundamental Right”.

I doubt if you understand what “belonging” means. Its a sense of fitting in. One need not be in their motherland to fit in. But perhaps that’s too deep a concept for you to grasp. Pardon me.

My mum is tiresome to shop with. She does these marathon shopping gigs – for her, shopping is a chore to complete. So, she’ll be running from 1 store to another, hardly stopping for a cuppa kaapi (coffee in South-Indianese). I can live without oxygen, as long as I can have my kaapi.

I agree that the “see everything, buy nothing” type is worse. I feel terrible whenever I’m forced to shop with one of them – I sort of leave a few meters between them & me, pretending I didn’t accompany them

Socks – Too good Yeah, I keep buying socks too – for my husband. Were it not for me, he’ll walk around wearing socks with holes as big as the ones in the ozone layer.

But i have another angle to it too, a experience when i am made to go shopping with some female counterpart. I mean they being used to run a marathon in a shopping store keep on hitting stands. What we face is various glimpses swinging from hope to frustration in the eyes of sales people. After a mountainous amount of time they spend in the shop, they finally arrive at a conclusion to buy nothing and those pitiful eyes of salespeople make me atleast buy a pair of socks, which usually comes in a combo pack of 3 these days. No surprises, i have a countless pairs of socks cornered by dust in my house

Many of these sales people work on a commission basis – the more pieces they sell, the more money they make. If they used the noodle inside their heads & followed modern sales techniques, they’ll sell more & make more money. Instead, they scare prospective customers away by stalking them.