The bus driver is gone an awfully long time. Lonely Planet gives the population of Pathankot, this bus-transfer outpost, as 140,000. I step outside to buy a drink, which I bring back to the bus, dodging the shawl salesmen. One of the passengers, a young man with a thin moustache, is outside having a smoke. As I approach the bus he seems delighted by me, and his face lights up with excitement.

“Hello friend!” he says. The Indians like to call people “friend”.

“Hello.”

India’s enormity is only physical and economical. Culturally, it is vast, but surprisingly uniform. And there is no greater evidence of this fact than what I will call the Indian Friendly Five, which are the five questions that you, a tourist, will be asked by every random Indian you meet, without exception, no matter where you are in the country, from Kashmir to Karnataka, from Pondicherry to Punjab. The Indian Friendly Five are as follows:

1. “First time [city name]?” or “First time India?”
2. “Where you come from?” (or “Your country?)”
3. “How long India?” ([sic] – this could mean “How long have you been in India?” or “How long will you stay in India?”)
4. “What’s your occupation?”
5. “You married unmarried?” ([sic] – or “You have girlfriend wife?”)

The order of the IFF varies (some Indians want to know the last two before all else), but the delivery is always as given. If I were to try to read meaning into these questions, I would start by mentioning that Indians love to practice their English, whether amongst themselves or with tourists. But the nationwide ubiquity of the IFF is the real riddle. I assure you I’m not making this up; most tourists I’ve asked about this have laughed reassuringly, and a Dutch guy I met in Bulgaria told me about these same five questions before I’d experienced them myself. For whatever reason these are the data that Indians are most curious about. An explanation of the IFF would require proper methods of scientific inquiry, perhaps by dispatching a fleet of garrulous and clandestine European pollsters across the Indian countryside. But I suspect that, as the saying goes, there are no answers, only more questions.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 13th, 2008 at 1:33 am and is filed under Uncategorized.