Ah, The Power Of Bollywood

My daughter, who was born and raised in New York, has only lived in India for six months. She has no idea what half the kids in her class are called, but she knows the name of just about every major Indian movie star, male and female. She gets confused between her numbers and her letters, but she can effortlessly rattle off the lyrics to current Hindi hit songs.

Ah, the power of Bollywood.

In India, it is all around us: I ring my neighbor's bell and it chimes the theme song from the biggest hit movie of 2006. My cell phone company bombards me with text messages that say I can, if I wish, download the main song of the movie thus far revolutionizing 2007, and use it as my ringtone.

But it isn't only India: These days, people the world over seem to be hooked onto Bollywood. I was visiting my parents in Geneva, Switzerland (where, incidentally, I grew up) last winter, browsing through the racks of movies at their neighborhood DVD club, when a very chic lady in a fur coat walked in. She stepped delicately up to the counter on her heeled boots, raised her Chanel glasses on her forehead, and asked the girl behind it for "un film Bollywood."

When I was a child, such a chic woman would most definitely not have wanted a Bollywood movie. In those days, Geneva and India couldn't have been farther removed from each other than Pluto is from the earth.

Forget about Bollywood - there was no Jackson Heights (Little India in Queens, NY), no Indian grocery store, not even the faintest whiff of Tandoori Chicken.