No Thank You necessary

I was out to dinner with a seemingly polite, young Indian man named Amand and he let me in on a little secret. Apparently "please" and "thank you" are considered condescending in India. I didn't believe it at first until I watched how the locals ordered their food and never used the common pleasantries. Could this be? Miss Manners must have never travelled to India. ((A note from linguist Noam Chomsky: politeness is actually built in to verb endings.))