Today in Mumbai, Kolkata, Delhi – in any big city in India – people, old, young and in-between, are everywhere chatting on cell phones or mobiles. The ring tones that chime constantly from every conceivable nook and cranny are ubiquitous, adding to the general cacophony of a modern South Asian street scene. The sound of portable phones is the most recent addition to the hodgepodge of noises one might hear, intermingling with loudspeakers playing music from the latest Bollywood hits, car and bus horns blaring, vendors of food and other items shouting out their wares, temple bells being struck, and the calling of Muslims to prayer. The new telecommunication technologies allow a person in Bangalore or Hyderabad to answer the questions of a customer of a multinational corporation calling from North America, while TV networks based in the West such as MTV, BBC, and CNN are now broadcast throughout the Indian subcontinent. Meanwhile, the Western pop culture transmitted to other parts of the globe is more and more permeated with influences from South Asia: Nora Jones, the daughter of world famous sitarist Ravi Shankar, is among the best selling artists of the early 2000s; the voice of the late Nusrat Ali Khan serves as a backdrop to the hit film Dead Man Walking; and the grocer Apu figures on the long-running animated TV show, The Simpsons.