Indian roots are not umbilical cords and no amount of spicy chicken tikka love can change that fact

That Wimbledon boys’ champion Samir Banerjee is actually American felt like an aside, with news anchors gushing about a “huge moment of pride for India”

Like politics, Bollywood and sports, “Find the Indian Connection” seems to have become a bona fide beat in our media houses. As soon as someone with Indian roots makes waves anywhere in the world, the reporters on this beat get cracking. When 17-year-old Samir Banerjee became the Wimbledon boys’ champion this year, the Indian connection beat went into instant overdrive. By the next morning, I knew that young Banerjee had played at the local tennis club on his last visit to Kolkata, where his family owns an apartment, and had eaten phuchka opposite Victoria Memorial. Assam staked its own claim to him, with a television channel calling it a “proud moment for the Northeast” because his grandfather was a general manger with an oil company in Assam in the 80s. That Banerjee is actually American felt almost like an aside, with news anchors gushing about a “huge moment of pride for India”. By now the format is fairly well established. Dig up a local relative willing to talk. An elated grandmother is best. When Nina Davuluri won the Miss America title in 2013, her grandmother in Vijayawada, who ran a group of Montessori institutions, told the media, “I was always confident she would go places.” The girls at the grandmother’s Montessori school celebrated Davuluri’s win while her home, we were told, wore a festive air. When Sunita Williams went to space as a NASA astronaut in 2006, no grandmother was available. No matter. Her father’s brother-in-law was around to do the honours.