Would you call this ‘entertainment’?

Entertainment isn’t only being confined to our wondrous B-Town universe. So entertainment isn’t only being confined to our wondrous B-Town universe — in the tricky way it sometimes has, of

magnifying to occupy more place, it seems to have seeped into the space reserved for global affairs. Witness the Murdoch roadshow, every day unravelling bigger thrills (?) as not just

scribes and owners but law enforcement officials and the PM join the fray, damage-control top-of-mind. In all the noise and skeletons tumbling out of cupboards, an unlikely Cinderella

emerges: the Chinese-born third Mrs Murdoch, trending masterfully on social networking sites for her quick reflexes in attempting to defend her 80-year-old husband from a pie-happy Malefic.

The one shining light in the bizarre PR catastrophe of Murdoch’s current reality, his wife now has a fan following and a bagful of nicknames — ‘Ninja Wendi’, ‘Tiger Mom’, and, for showing

off what one MP called her timely ‘left hook’ —  ‘Smackdown Sister’. Meanwhile, even as the Brit PM battles hard for his popularity vote midst the Murdoch mess, back home the Congress party

is showing its disenchantment with one from the entertainment world. If Harry Potter is the current buzzword, then we have our own brouhaha over the Half-Blood Prince right here at home, as

Kat Kaif’s apparently innocently worded comparison to Rahul Gandhi’s Indian-Italian lineage spawns a sharp retort from the party spokesperson, who demonstrates his own version of ‘Smackdown,

Sister’ by demanding to know ‘who is she?’. Kat later apologises in case she has hurt sentiments. It seems such a storm in a teacup though — Kat did not make it up, Rahul Gandhi’s mother is

Italian, his father, Indian, that is incontestable. So what? India traditionally has witnessed a melting pot of cultures, we are proud of our history where we have seen Mughal invasions,

Greek conquests, Portuguese conversions, British annexation to empire — we have seen different cultures, great cultures of the world, and absorbed them and embraced them, made them our own.

Our identity is still Indian, isn’t it? Why the touchiness over whether it comes from one parent or both, or even, as in some special cases, none? Ask all those NRIs who make the cash

registers sing for Bollywood overseas, such that collections surpass home turf on most occasions. Ask followers of one of the towering role models of our times, the Albanian born late Mother

Teresa, considered Indian by all who knew her. Being Indian is in the mind. _ On popular culture,  society and the incredible lightness of being_