1. Walk and drive as if you are invisible: Indian congeniality stops at the steering wheel.
If you have to drive or cross a street, forget about the peaceful, loving Indian nation you may have heard or read about. You'll need luck and pluck to not get struck. Once behind the wheel or astride their two wheelers, Indians are about as concerned for their fellow citizens as the sack of garbage they just tossed out the window. Turn signals, headlights and common sense are optional for motor vehicle drivers.

India's traffic deaths are soaring at an astronomical rate and won't level out until 2042. Don't belive me? Read the World Health Organization's WHO: World report on road traffic injury prevention. While many Bangaloreans claim that traffic doesn't move fast enough in the city to cause any real injuries, the statistics spell out a different story. In Bangalore, pedestrian deaths are greater than those in New York City and nationwide, pedestrian deaths are 34% of all traffic deaths.

According to model predictions in the WHO report, "between 2000 and 2020, South Asia will record the largest growth in road traffic deaths, with a dramatic increase of 144%." You can guess which country leads the pack. Many drivers don't use normal driving techniques such as looking to see if there are other vehicles entering the intersection. When I first arrived in India, I assumed that Indians had a highly developed sense of telepathy. But now, knowing the accident rate and having had two motorcycles and a bus smack into my car, I understand that ignoring red lights, zebra stripes (pedestrian crossings) and other vehicles are accepted facts about driving here. I don't think diversity training would help me understand why running over people is part of the culture. I simply view it as a dangerous practice and don't really care if that opinion brands me as culturally insensitive. It's simply unacceptable and people in India need to own up to the fact that they need to become safer drivers.

I don't think diversity training would help me understand why running over people is part of the culture. I simply view it as a dangerous practice and don't really care if that opinion brands me as culturally insensitive. It's simply unacceptable and people in India need to own up to the fact that they need to become safer drivers.

Bus drivers are, arguably, the worst of the lot. A friend told me that if you flunk your driver's test, the city hires you as a bus driver. Driving a bus, regularly, on the same route must create a special kind of meanness, as bus drivers here are complete assholes (like they are in many places worldwide - Chicago and Athens come to mind). These 'Road Rajas' consider the oncoming lane their lane. Many buses have brake lights that don't work or drivers that don't signal lane changes or turns. When they do signal, it consists of a helper lamely sticking a hand out the window and giving a cursory wave. According to the WHO report In India, "in the cities and on rural highways, buses and trucks are involved in more than 50% of the crashes affecting pedestrians."

On the highways, death awaits you. Almost every guidebook advises leaving the driving to others, "rent a car with a driver." To me, that's insane advice because the guy you're paying to shuttle you down the highway is a major contributor to the soaring accident rate. Hiring one of the much vaunted 'drivers' is simply a speculative venture as many are road hardened agitators that are more often than not causing chaos. I'd bet that these "professional drivers" contribute to many of the accidents. You are better off driving yourself, taking it easy, or getting on a big bus and trust that the jerk behind the wheel gets you to your destination even though he may send a few cars full of families into a ditch.

What's even more disturbing is that a mild-mannered co-worker, considerate neighbor or cheerful store owner becomes a high-risk driver on the road seeking any opportunity to pass vehicles on blind curves, hills, in fog, or, of course, using the other lane even if the other vehicles coming towards them have the right-of-way. The lane is theirs....it's part of the culture.

Bottom line, be exceedingly careful whenever you have to walk or drive anywhere and understand that the mortality rate is increasing by the minute.

For more information, also read As prosperity clogs roads, India's drivers yield to no one.

2. Drink bottled water and don't drink the tap water, no matter how native you think you are.
Even some of the natives drink bottled water. How safe can it be where 40,000 households in the east and central parts of the city do not have 24/7 water availability? Water gets polluted due to run off in the monsoon, industrial seepage, contamination with sewage as well as human and animal excreta. Add agricultural waste into drinking water pipelines through cracks and leaky joints, you have water that is not safe to drink.

Need more? According to India Together, "India has 23 metropolitan cities (with a population of over 1 million) and 5 mega cities (with a population of over 5 million). Less than half of urban India has access to a sewage disposal system. Most of the existing collection systems discharge directly to the receiving water without treatment. Garbage, domestic or otherwise, is directly dumped into water bodies or the roadside which often wash into streams and lakes. Little surprise, then, that a recent study by the Society for Clean Environment (SoCleen) showed that a significant percentage of water in many parts of Mumbai city was unpotable."

SoCleen also noted, "Fecal coliform (bacteria found in excreta), an important indicator of water safety, was several hundred times higher than the norm. For example, samples from Chembur, Masjid, Parel-Dadar, Mulund and Jogeshwari touched 1600 fecal coliform (fc) per 100 ml of water. Safety norms in India set the limits at 10 fc per 100 ml. The WHO says that there should be no fecal coliform in drinking water."

3. Noise is your enemy and you need to be creative to suppress it because you can't defeat it.
The World Health Organization (WHO) reports that "45 decibels (is) the safe noise level for a city. Metropolitan areas in India usually register an average more than 90 decibels; Mumbai is rated the third noisiest city in the world, with New Delhi following closely." Bangalore with 6 million plus, cannot be far behind.

You cannot escape noise but you may be able to find ways to suppress the level. First, drive with your windows up and radio turned loud. Everyone will be honking their horn all the time so listening for honks as a warning signal for you to move over or stop is moot.

The next step, if you can afford it, is to live on a dead end street or a gated community where entry and exit is infrequent and most of the other people in the neighborhood are also seeking solace.

If you are a local hire getting the prevailing wage (as we are) and not the big expat salaries, then choose your apartment carefully. Look for streets that are small, tight and go nowhere, without chai shops which always seem to have 10-20 males hanging around gossiping like old maids.

If you can't live in a gated community or dead end street, you'll need to use earplugs and soundproofing material to shut out the noise so you can sleep. You may also want to consider getting a few neighbors and rounding up the stray dogs then jettisoning these horrible creatures elsewhere - hopefully dozens of kilometers from your domicile. If you don't, get ready for all night howlathons.

4. Cook your own food or if you find a restaurant that doesn't wreak havoc on your stomach, go back there to eat.
Even then, be careful as you may not even be able to trust the milkman as he may substitute white poster colour for milk. Proof? The Times of India reported that an inspector in the food department, Ashutosh Tripathi commented on his own experience: "They (milk companies) are absolutely brazen. One day I asked our milkman the reason why the milk was so low in fat content. The very next day he got us very good quality milk. We stopped taking it from him since we suspected the use of synthetic substances. He did this despite knowing the department where I was working!"

Call it Bangalore Brownies, Delhi Belly, Tamil Trots, diarrhea will happen and traveler's diarrhea will happen.

5. Find a good (and real) doctor.
Recent reports have pegged the faux doctor count at around 5,000 just in Bangalore. Only Rama, Shiva and Ganesh know how many quacks exist in India. We were lucky enough to have friends hook us up with a real doc, a guy that actually went to medical school and cares about his patients. We have seen him twice and Dr. Mateen has really come through on both occasions. And, he charges about USD$4.00 for an office visit and I'm sure he would make house calls if needed.

6. Get used to seeing child laborers.
It's a well known and accepted fact that kids do some pretty strenuous labor here and you don't see many demonstrations or citizen groups trying to get "the authorities"" do anything about this pitiful situation. In India, many of life's expectations go in hand with expectations of one's caste. For the lower castes, this means menial labor and being subservient and deferential to the higher castes. The British didn't invent this system either although they played it well for a bit. Many historians peg the caste system origins as at least 2000 years old. Because the Brits first dealt with Brahmans, the highest caste, some favors were allowed that were taken away by the Muslim rulers. Soon the Brits saw this being abused and made sure that upper-caste persons received the same punishment for committing the same offense as lower-caste persons, despite Brahman protestations.

And although the intermingling of the castes may have perked a bit during the British rule, the division between castes never evaporated and the caste system is alive and well in India today. There is one small group here in Bangalore, Jeeva, is trying to get kids off the work site and into the art studio. Others,like the Shanti Bhavan school, founded by Abraham George, are actually trying to do change the way things work here.

So in a country of one billion, you're going to need thousands of groups like Jeeva and the George Foundation who are actually performing outreach work.

7. Have some cash in your pocket (and your house) to deal with corruption.
I covered some examples of corruption in India’s hi-tech darling, Bangalore, In the Transparency International Global Corruption Barometer 2003, the results of a survey showed that Indians would like to eliminate or at least reduce corruption in the education system, political parties and the police.

We've had a few experiences engaging in this national past-time with police officers, handymen, and phone company employees. Enough said.

8. Queues (or waiting in line, as Americans know it) are for others.
On example of many is that you simply have to firmly push yiour way to the front when you know your turn. One example is when I was first in line to check in to see a doctor at a hospital. The hospital receptionist beckoned me to the counter, a 4-5 people jumped in and around shoving ID cards and notes to the receptionist. The technique many of us so called patient people had to use was to simply stuck your arm in-between the people at the counter and wedge them away as you insist to be handled next. And, oh yeah, queue cutting happens even at the multinational business where I work. Rudeness has no boundaries.

In India, Rudeness is taken with a Cup of Tea - The Equinox - Features Welcome to Bangalore! Walk carefully, drive safely and have a nice day ;-)