The first time visit of a foreigner to India can be a shocker.
Those from the first world and elsewhere planning their maiden trip to India may hurt their sensibilities by seeing the extremes of many things in human existence.
The first thing they will encounter here is a sea of brown humanity.
The connoisseur of slow food can see how the slow speed of our bureaucracy operates right at the airport.
The words of John Kenneth Galbraith, the United States Ambassador to India (1961 - 1963) describing India as a "functional anarchy" will surely ring true.
Students of physics will try to find an order in chaos prevailing around them.
The ubiquitous beggars will compete with taxi drivers to grab you and your money.
You will be charged for a service not rendered, and overcharged for service rendered.
For the first time in your life you will come face to face with food adulteration which is done with impunity.
Right from artificial milk (ever heard that?), to adulterated butter to buffalo milk adulterated with cow's milk and all kind of milks with tap water which itself is undrinkable due traces of unhealthy chemicals and microbes.
Here vegetables are coloured green with harmful dyes, and watermelon is injected with red colour and sugar to make its flesh look dark red and taste sweeter.
This is a country that ashamedly tolerates adulteration as a way of life.
Well, even life saving drugs, here, can be spurious.
Another shocker is that you will see ubiquitous Indian male urinating against a wall, and spitting wherever possible, sometime spitting blood.
Oops! It is not blood silly, it is betel nut slices with green cardamom and clove folded or wrapped in betel leave smeared with catechu extract and lime and laced with chewing tobacco.
In short this is 'Pan' that sets India (undivided India-'Pan' India-to be precise) apart from the rest of the world.
You will find chewed tobacco extract mixed saliva spit on the walls of government offices and public places.
You will also find pie-dogs wherever you are in India along with stray cows, wallowing pigs, buffalos and goats on streets and thoroughfares.
Another feature of India is its foul smelling eyesore called garbage.
You will find it everywhere, especially outside garbage collection bins and dumps, covered with swarms of houseflies and infested with cockroaches, rats and what not.
Traffic sense or rather the lack of it make recoil with horror.
You have heard of pot-holed Indian roads, but pot-hole can be a misnomer for crater.
You will have to withstand all this and more if you ever visit India in the foreseeable future.
Therefore, beware! Visit India, nevertheless.