Don'ts and don'ts

When I was a kid, Mom, in a bid to master written Hindi (she'd picked up spoken Hindi when Dad was posted in UP), had subscribed to almost every Hindi magazine there was. Manorama, Manohar Kahaniyan, Sarita, Sarika, and what not. Every now and then, I'd give them a read too. Of all, I remember Sarita very clearly, a Reader's Digest-sized magazine, which had the crappiest Bollywood section of all magazines, and yet I devoured it with gusto.

The magazine also had a feature called "Mujhe shikaayat hai..." ("I have a complaint...") where people wrote in to complain about other people's habits that annoyed them. It was very interesting to read that feature because every now and then I'd read something and go, "Oh, me too!" or "Oh oh oh I know someone who does this!" or "Oh no, I do this! You mean this annoys people??"

I have a few too. Here are the top five things people sometimes do that annoy me:

- People rubbing birthday cake all over someone's face
- People not telling their kids off when they misbehave
- People turning up late with no good reason
- People talking while they're brushing their teeth
- People scraping the cutting board with the sharp end of the knife

Contributions from bewdas are most welcome. Perhaps together we can put together a list of don'ts to follow, and in the process become better people (aka less annoying to others). :P