Slumdog Americans

I knew things had turned a corner when garden-variety Anglo-suburban Americans started correcting my Marathi, which is to say when they started regarding my use of "Bombay" rather than "Mumbai" as denoting an embarrassing lack of sophistication on par with using a fork and spoon, instead of chopsticks, at a Chinese restaurant. Not that I speak a word of Marathi, at least not a word one would use in polite company. And not that these would-be sophisticates do, either, but I'll bet dollars to dosas that it's only a matter of time before American hipsters start eating khichdi with their fingers in trendy Indo-fusion bistros.

Slumdog Millionaire? In the US, it's Slumdog Everywhere.

There were cheers in the South Bronx, where there is hardly an Indian-American to be seen, when Slumdog Millionaire won the best-picture Oscar. In midtown Manhattan's Murray Hill, aka "Curry Hill", the beatific visage of Freida Pinto smiles from shop windows, and India could do much worse than to have her as its current public face, even if many Americans believe her to be of Latin American rather than Indian origin because her name is "Pinto" and not "Muthukumarasamy."

Bollywood, along with its more urbane cousins in Indian art cinema, has long had a cult following here. Arthouse cinemas have Hindi film nights, though it must be noted that Americans take Bollywood much more seriously than Indians do — none of the furtive smoking and less-than-furtive cellular banter that characterise the authentic experience in Delhi or Bom- — excuse me, Mumbai. (Seriously, at the rate it's going, sensitive American tourists soon will be informing Mumbaikar taxi drivers that they really oughtn't to call CST "Victoria Terminus.")

It's not just Slumdog Millionaire, either. Chandni Chowk to China managed to break out of the foreign-film ghetto in its own small way, playing in suburban theatres, benefiting from Slumdog's buzz. Who knows, maybe even Salman Rushdie will start selling again.

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