Enough with the swimming jokes already!

I'm off to Mumbai this Sunday for 4 days. It's a business trip and I'll be accompanied by 3 of my Singaporean colleagues.

For one of them, it's her first trip to India, and like most Singaporeans, she is naturally paranoid - "Can I drink the water there? Can I get a taxi easily? Will it be dirty? Will the food be ok?" and the like. This I can forgive - it's a fairly common reaction, when you're from squeaky clean Singapore and your only impression of India is from what you see in the news and on programmes like "The Amazing Race".

What I can't stand is people (like one other person on my team) who visit India at least once every 2 months, and go around making jokes on needing a raft there or learning to swim or carrying a big umbrella (all in light of the recent floods). Once is ok for a laugh. But doing it again and again grates on you.

It is especially insensitive and stupid when you do it in a meeting with me (an Indian) present and expect me to laugh along. It borders on ridiculous when you walk up to my cubicle, grin ear-to-ear and ask me if I need a life jacket, and patronisingly advise me not to drink the water there.

Granted, India has a long way to go in cleanliness (and that's putting it lightly), granted even that dozens of people have died in the past few days from leptospirosis (the mini-epidemic is now in its decline). But for heaven's sakes read the news, you people! The floods are over. The city is back to normal. The clean foreigner-friendly 5-star hotels you will be staying in will do all they can to make sure you're safe - and as their customer service is far better than in Singapore, you will be well taken care of. You don't eat street food here anyway, and you drink out of sealed bottles, so what's going to happen?

I mean no disrespect to the dead, and my heart goes out to their families, but put the damn thing in perspective - 200 people out of a city of 12 million - and GROW UP. And these people who died were from the slum areas.

Sorry, I just had to let it out. Bad day today.