You know it is a bear market when . . .

• Someone who has been earning Rs 75,000 a month (including DA) suddenly starts asking herself philosophic questions like "Can I eke out an existence at Rs 7,500 a month?"
• You suddenly swipe your card into work at 9.30 am, coast over the irritable desire to look at the watch at 9.54 am or excuse yourself to the toilet at 9.55 am if only to conduct hushed conversations with a mechanical voice at the other end
• You start getting 'great work cards' from colleagues; seniors call you into their cabin wanting to know the raaz behind your sudden increase in productivity
• You start impressing the neighbour's daughter with the use of words like 'planning', 'portfolio construct' and 'instrument mix'
• You move from page 1 to the back page of business newspapers' Money and Markets by reflex action
• You go to the doctor with the 'sinking feeling in the solar plexus complaint' but she checks your pulse and there is nothing wrong, she asks you to say aaah, stick your tongue out and you are absolutely fine
• Your favourite fantasy is not running around trees in the rain wearing white shoes behind Mallika Sherawat but for some curious reason '9.56 am, 21 January'
• You boast at a party of having shorted the market at 21,000 and suddenly the listeners drift
• You start taking a perverse consolation from the fact that we are better than 'Gayatriben's husband, who had to sell 30 per cent of his inventory to pay the broker'
• The children start getting the drift that the world has changed in some way they are yet to fathom because the holiday destination has been switched from Phuket to Puri and the carrier from Thai International to Puri Express second class and all the parents will proffer is a stoical paisey phainkne ki kya zaroorat'
• All those people who would arrogantly demand "Will it double in two months?" now venture to tentatively explore "Will it get back to the prices we bought in two years?"
• You stop getting cold calls -- 'Good morning Mr Patherya, how is your day? Can we come and see you for five minutes? Send you the proposal on the e-mail? No, we would like to come and see you instead' -- prospecting your brokerage business from financial securities firms
• When you get a mail on Narayan Murthy's 'simple living, high thinking' stuff and you cc it to 23 people in office who in turn cc it to 250 others, who in turn forward it to 1,563 people who in turn send it to 12,304 people -- and within 37 hours, it pops back into your mail with an interesting addition 'If you circulate this to 7 people in the next hour, your portfolio will bottom out; if you don't then the company in which you hold stock will do a buyback and your letter of offer will be waylaid in post'
• You start having tea with friends and lunch with in-laws; the word 'social' doesn't remind you of an awful waste of time
• You can actually have a business meeting without SMS alerts on market movements
• The restaurant steward motions you to the tables closest to the television (featuring CNBC) and you tell him 'Somewhere where we are not distracted please'
• Experts when they find calls coming in from  business channels offer their mobiles pleadingly to colleagues with 'Please keh do ki I am in a meeting and main phone karoonga but after 3.30'
• People suddenly discover they have relatives in the US who they have not spoken to for 18 years and then they confront them with the opening line of Tya badhu barobar
• When Marc Faber predicts that the index will go down to 12,000 and in the same newspaper edition a consensus of brokers indicates an index of 19,000 by the year's end
• When the envelope carrying the dividend cheque is treated with considerable respect
• When you ask for the Black Swan by Nicholas Nassim Taleb at the bookstore and the manager responds with Kya baat hai, every third walk-in is asking for this?'
• When merchant bankers tell IPO clients: "You will need to leave value on the table for investors"
• When an effective stress test becomes dirt cheap; all you need is the financial newspaper and if after the 37th line of the stock quotations page you find your pulse accelerating and breath halting, then you need a GP
• When the broker calls and you tell him Aap mat call keejiyega! Darkaar hogi to main karoonga
• When you want to do a fund raiser and you diplomatically skirt anyone connected with the stock market
• When your chartered accountant calls and says 'Bhaiji, problem solved. Is baar losses khareedney ki naubat nahi aayegi
• When you invite the guy who had a big problem meeting his margin calls and he says Aajkal to mein kahi baahar jaata nahi hu, sirf office and back
• When the standard escape route for every analyst becomes ghatey to liyo and when the stock declines, they say the same
• When the word neevra is used in every seventh line by brokers, analysts, tipsters, jobbers and market writers
• When even a casual ghabraao nahi lifts the clouds enough for the caller to call three others and say Babubhai kahey chhey hay ghabraavnu jehvu chhej nahi and within half an hour of frantic calling and re-calling, some 23 people are walking in a better frame of mind to office
• Everyone is poorer, but bloody hell, no one is admitting it