The biggest up side to living halfway around the world is a bit of an idea about a batch of other countries. The sort you don’t get while sitting in Peoria.

We live in the same country with 2 million Indians. The UAE has twice as many Indians, all of them expats, as it does Arab citizens, and if you live here long enough you realize just how heavily influenced by the subcontinent the UAE is.

You hear this or that about India. This place is hot, that one has dangerous politics, etc.

So it was with some smiling anticipation that I took a look at a map of India as wryly described by one of its citizens.

Here it is, a map of India by “a cool Bangalorean.”

Bangalore being one of India’s main city … known in the States mostly for giving its name to the “bangalore torpedo.”

A few helpful aids …

India has some bits that crawl over Bangladesh (in the east) and then descend again, and some of that is labeled as “China wants this.” The area titled “tea” is pretty self-explanatory. “Mines and Maoists” indicates a region where a bloody little Communist rebellion is dragging on and the dreary Indians Communist Party makes electoral inroads.

The “National market … smugglers” state in purple in the south is the state of Kerala, the home to many of the Indians in the UAE. The “Cool Beaches and Cute Women” encompasses the former Portuguese enclave of Goa. The “Shopkeepers are from here” is Gujarat, over there in the west.

Jumping back to the north the “Night Watchmen” is actually Nepal. Working west, “Rudyard Kipling” is Uttarakhand, and “Apples and and cute women” is another state (and you can see them all at this political map of India).

The “Superb food and hot women” is Punjab, and the “Snow, forbidden hot women, heaven on earth & terrorism” is Kashmir, where Pakistan (“used to be good cricketers”) and India indulge in shooting wars now and again over who owns what. The “Genghis Khan” would be Mongolia.

You know you’ve been in the region a while when you look at the map … and smile. You begin to get it, a little.