About a dozen or so years ago, when I first arrived in the US, we bounced around the north-east for a while, changing 4 homes in 2 years. It was with a big gasp of relief that I landed in the Bay Area, where Indian stores and Indian mores were both part of the landscape and I found families who shared my cultural ambivalence.

Lately, though, it seems that the India of my childhood has been making an insidious creep into mainstream American society. Many values that I considered uniquely Indian are popping up as micro and macro trends in the big, bad West. Check these out –

Education – Possibly as a result of the powerful waves emanating from Tam-bram engineering brains, there has been a resurgence in the importance of science and math in early education. Some schools, especially those serving predominantly minority populations, have pared their curriculum down to these two basic functions. With President Bush's No Child Left Behind Act, testing and teaching to the test have never been as significant. Without commenting on whether this is a positive trend or not, it does appear that elementary education in public schools is slowly beginning to resemble the rote-driven, drill emphasizing education I received growing up.

Girls gone mild – A new book by Wendy Shalit, a 1997 graduate of Williams College in Massachusetts, profiles young women who stand up to social pressures to embrace promiscuity. Her previous book was 'Returning to modesty: discovering the lost virtue'. Apparently there is a growing trend in the country of girls wanting to (gasp!) stay in school, work hard and generally lead wholesome lives.

Abstinence -Thanks to the President's born-again evangelism, abstinence-only sex education has been given federal funding of over a billion dollars. A corollary to 'girls gone mild', this seems to forebode a return to the time when girls were chaste and boys had to wait. 

The Bollywood influence – Suddenly, song-and-dance routines, which used to be a staple of Hollywood studio productions 50 years ago, are making a big comeback – witness the success of High School Musical. Thanks to the cross-over influences of Mira Nair and Gurinder Chaddha, we get to see Nicole Kidman dancing to 'Chamma Chamma'  and our heroines gracing the red carpet at all the prestigious film festivals. Hrithik Roshan was profiled as an 'It' boy in GQ magazine as early as 2002.

The Yoga boom – There is Ashtanga Yoga, Viniyoga, Integral Yoga, Iyengar Yoga, Kripalu Yoga, Kundalini Yoga, Bikram Yoga, Power Yoga, Corporate Yoga, Office Yoga, Zen Yoga, Belly-dancing Yoga( I kid you not) and Pilates Yoga. Need I say more?

Medicine – Thanks to the advances in genetic testing, scientists are coming around to the fact that each individual may require a different set of therapies and medications for the same set of symptoms, a fact that has been a principal precept in Ayurveda for centuries. Kudos to Deepak Chopra for making millions off ancient Indian medical science. Hey, at least he understood the worth of our heritage!

Fashion – Chikan, Zardosi, Kantha, Tie-Dye- these have already penetrated mainstream clothing retail establishments. The long, crushed fabric skirts, that used to be a staple of Colaba Causeway in Mumbai are now so ubiquitous here that I have sometimes found them on sale at the local American grocery store. 

Food – Once dependent on price-gouging Indian stores for my spices and dals, I now find clean, uncontaminated, organic versions in most large grocery chains. Most restaurants in the neighborhood have also bowed to the overwhelming vegetarian requests and now offer a fairly varied meatless menu. The best example is a Thai restaurant a stone's throw away, where the vegetarian menu is so extensive that Friday evenings resemble an Indian Babel. 

Comics – A series of comics based on Indian mythology have hit the stands recently. Check out a review of Ramayana 3392 here. 

And last but not least, the Pressure Cooker! Imagine my visiting mother's amusement when a Caucasian friend tripped in one evening to announce she had discovered a most wonderful kitchen appliance which allowed her to 'cook stuff in minutes.'

Of course, the India that I am talking about is one I view through the nostalgia-filled, rose-tinted glasses of memory. I suspect that urban India has changed so much since I've been away that culturally, a fuddy-duddy like me is going to be more comfortable here today than back home.

Like astronomers who make inferences about a distant planet's existence from certain anomalies in the space surrounding it, I didn’t need to see RGV Ki  Aag to know it was going to turn out to be a stinker. But the hubby, bored out of his mind on a recent India trip, decided to give it a dekko. On the evening call, after some preliminary coochie-cooing (Him: “The movie started off bad in the first frame and got progressively worse.” Me: “I told you so”) we sat down to chew the fat and discuss what possessed RGV to make such a colossal dud and came up with some theories –

Greed: Curiosity Factor X 0.5 billion people who have seen Sholay( I may be underestimating that number). You do the math.

Pride:  He did make another film inspired by an iconic movie and carried it off rather well (Sarkar/Godfather). Why not try for the Holy Grail of Bollywood? And the title says it all.

Gluttony: You have to be a glutton for punishment to take on a challenge of that sort. After all, this is a movie mothers motivate their young children with – “So ja beta, or main tumhe kal Sholay dikhaoongi.”

Envy: Farhan Akhtar’s stylish remake of Don and the opening collections must have prompted the question –“Why not ME?”

Lust: This is hubby’s charitable view of why RGV persists in casting the talentless Nisha Kothari in film after film. Me, I don’t think the casting couch has that much power. Heroine’s sidekick maybe. But not Basanti. The more likely explanation is that the lady has RGV’s pet dog Tommy in her kabza and is sending him regular tail clippings to make sure he keeps his end of the bargain.

Sloth: Why bother hunting for an original script when such nice, tried and tested ones are available for mangling? Just change a dialogue or two, find some contemporary stars to sign on, and voila, you have a queue of producers salivating at your front door.

Wrath: For all the naysayers who thought this remake should never have been attempted. You talking to me? You talking to me?

We also discussed possible casting choices that might have elevated the movie from a -5 to a respectable 0 out of 5. Ajay Devgan as Jai instead of Veeru, Salman(my choice) or Akshay Kumar(his) as Veeru, and Urmila as Basanti.

Also puzzling is the schizophrenia that seems to inhabit RGV’s Factory. There’s a Rangeela, then there’s a Daud. There’s a Company, then there’s a Naach. Kudos to him for constantly experimenting but boy, when he’s bad, he’s horrid. Judging by his track record, the next movie should be great! I look forward to it.

MY BOLLYWOOD PREDICTION: Saw the promos for Om Shanti Om. Don’t know about the movie, but my early prediction is that heroine Deepika Padukone will be a superstar. She has the ‘it’ factor that can’t be manufactured or earned. Remember, you heard it first here.