How to spot an Indian

* Everything you eat is savoured with garlic, onions and chillies.

* You try and re-use gift wrappers, gift boxes, and of course aluminium foil.

* You are standing next to the two largest size suitcases at the airport.

* You arrive one or two hours late to a party, and think it's normal.

* You peel the stamps off letters that the Postal Service missed to stamp.

* Your toilet has a plastic bowl next to the commode.

* All your children have pet names, which sound nowhere close to their real names.

* You talk for an hour at the front door when leaving someone's house.

* You load up the family car with as many people as possible.

* You use plastic to cover anything new in your house whether it's the remote control, VCR, carpet or new couch .

* You live with your parents even if you are 40 years old. (And they like it that way).

* If she is NOT your daughter, you always take interest in knowing whose daughter has run with whose son and feel it's your duty to spread the word.

* You only make long distance calls after 11pm.

* If you don't live at home, when your parents call, they ask if you've eaten, even if it's midnight.

* When your parents meet Indian for the first time and talk for a few minutes, you soon discover they are your relatives.

* Your parents don't realize phone connections to foreign countries have improved in the last two decades, and still scream at the top of their lungs while talking.

* You have bed sheets on your sofas so as to keep them from getting dirty.

* It's embarrassing if your wedding has less than 600 people.

* You list your daughter as "fair and slim" in the matrimonial no matter what she looks like.

* You're alw ays interested to know/interfere in others' personal matters, what they are doing, where they are going, etc.