A few years ago, I was attending a family wedding, albeit a bit reluctantly. Needless to say, at my age, attending weddings is a chore, performed often for the sake of reciprocity. “No, we can’t skip, they came for your wedding too,” my mother would issue an ultimatum on the family WhatsApp video call.

This reciprocity keeps the wedding industry alive. But, that’s not what this column is about. Let me steer it to the point. At the same wedding that I am talking about, when the bride came back from the beauty parlour, one girl screamed her appreciation, “Wow, didi! You are looking like a foreigner.” The bride started blushing, the five-figure make-up deal had proved successful. Only in the subcontinent, with all its patriotic and swadeshi fervour, “looking like a foreigner” is taken as a compliment. Everywhere else, it would be a slur, something people will surely take offence to. Indeed, in the MAGA world, a retort could fly, “Try and deport me, then.”

Indians have always been fascinated by foreign lands. Bollywood, until late, ascribed a lot of value to “phoren returnees”. Anyone working hard for podium finishes at school and college a few decades ago had broadly........

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