Expats ignore blitz of US travel advisories

Last week, the United States asked its citizens living and travelling in India to keep a low profile during the festival season. There is a high possibility of terror attacks, the travel advisory warned. It was around this time that a stand-up comic performing at a private event in a Juhu hotel, asked if any Americans were in the audience.

And Kat Ferrara, who was standing on a sofa to get a better view, immediately put up her hand to announce, rather proudly, ������Yes. I���m from New York City.������

Ferrara, the owner of a dog bakery in Juhu and secretary of Mumbai���s American Women���s Club, has been living and travelling in India for eight years. She is used to receiving such emailed advisories from her homeland. In the past three years, there have been warnings discouraging travel to India after events such as the 26/7 deluge, terror attacks, swine flu, bomb blasts and Diwali fire-crackers.

������I don���t read them unless I saw it was something major like 26/11,������ confesses Ferrara, admitting that America has a tendency to ������go overboard a bit������.

Ferrara is one of Mumbai���s many Americans who admit they are used to being bombarded with all sorts of ������ignorant and somewhat arrogant������ views about India from friends and well-wishers.



Take toilet paper, don���t drink water outside and don���t talk to strange men. Old stereotypes die hard. But expat Americans say they manage once they learn that India has its problems, Mumbai its chaos, crackers do not mean biscuits and this is a place where elephants trail Mercedes Benz cars, open defecation is not fined and the zoo is a crime against animals.

Americans in India also discover first-world touches like five-star hotels, Prithvi Theatre, maid servants, real tigers (in Kerala) and also that, as Anita Taroc laughs, ������toilet paper can be bought������. ������Do they have roads there?������ someone once asked Ferrara, who replied innocently, ������No, we have to depend on parachutes.������

Says the pet-sitter, ������As kids, we are trained to think of America as the best country.������ And although Kat Ferrara doesn���t deny that she comes from the ������best country������, these advisories, she feels, are a way of constantly reiterating that fact to citizens outside the US, ������not consciously or for evil purposes, but for civic pride������.

Taroc, an Indian American-counsellor-cum-corporate trainer from California moved to Mumbai in 2007 when her husband���s company offered him an opportunity in the city. She wrestled with the standard moving-country problems: learning a strange language, making new friends, and booking a gas cylinder in advance. Now though, she can chat with vendors in Hindi and make her own judgments about travel.