Just yesterday, my darling friend from Vancouver — we shall call her Jassi — came barreling into my Noida apartment, luggage askew, waving her phone in my face, and hollering, “Punjabi aa gaye oye !”

She was in such a tizzy that I could barely make out the silhouette of the always dapper Diljit Dosanjh with Jimmy Fallon of The Tonight Show on her screen.

“ Kede Punjabi?” I asked, pouring her a Diet Coke on the rocks as she queened it on my sofa — legs tucked, shoes and all. “The ones at home or the NRIs and OCIs?”

“Both,” she replied, talking a mile a minute about Indian and Punjabi representation in Hollywood. She is not wrong, the GOAT singer has certainly gone mainstream in America, much like Priyanka Chopra-Jonas before him.

That is how Jassi and I somehow found ourselves playing the exhausting parlour game: Who did a better job marketing their Indianness to the Americans – Priyanka Chopra-Jonas or Diljit Dosanjh ?

Jassi, I am afraid, was none too impressed with Miss World 2000.…