, red bindi, and, you know, she was asked in an elevator once, "is that a hole in your head and that's the blood?" you know, it's unimaginable today. and i just recently was all over the country for my book tour. it's amazing. you can go pretty far out in the u.s. to all kinds of places and people are asking sophisticated, third-level questions about what's happening with the maoist movement in india, what's happening with this, what's happening with that. so the days of asking whether that's a hole in your head are really over, and that's partly a result of great media coverage in this country of india in the last many years, many more correspondents, books, but it's also obviously a result of popular culture and just india's changed stature in the world. it's important to remember that when a country's stature changes, it doesn't just affect the things we often think of in terms of economy and diplomacy. it filters right down into whether an eighth grader feels comfortable doing a bollywood dance for the talent show, or just does ballet like everybody else. and these big geopolitical