Re: personal hygiene among desis
Okay so everyone's addressed the food thing. Good to know!
I am surprised no one has brought up dirty-sock smell yet. I am mostly referring to desis in the west for this example. I remember in high school, having many desis in my chemistry and biology classes and one smell that I still associate with those classes is dirty-sock-smell! Not sure how many weeks do they go with one pair of socks, I've never understood how they cannot smell it.
One good thing, however, that came out of this experience is that it made me super-duper paranoid about my own shoes and socks. To this day, I have the most number of socks from all of the people I know - because I am now obsessed with making sure I never ever repeat wearing the same pair twice without a wash!!
Anyway, another thing I am reminded of right now is once seeing a guy (desi, of course!) from my high school in May and noticing salt marks on his pants. Last time we had snow and salt was in February of that year - when I saw those* clear and obvious* salt marks, I felt soo grossed out. Now, it could be anything but if you are going around wearing pants that look like they still have the salt mark after months - people are bound to think you haven't washed them in a longggggg while!