India Calling

Outsourced,a TV show,is about an American who manages a call centre in India.

Back in superpower times,cultural clashes took place on this side of the ocean and the joke was on the foreigners. Andy Kaufman memorably played Latka,an oddball Eastern European cabdriver,on Taxi. Bronson Pinchot was an émigré from a Greek-like island on Perfect Strangers,a sitcom about Balki Bartokomous,a guileless shepherd who collided with the American way of life.

The TV show Outsourced,which began last week and is based on a 2006 movie with the same title,reverses the premise. American naïf,Todd Ben Rappaport,a manager at Mid America Novelties in Kansas City is sent to Mumbai to run a call centre staffed by Indian employees.

Todd loves and mangles Indian civilisation. On his first ride in an auto rickshaw,he is scared but exhilarated by the surging,heedless traffic. He is stunned to find a sacred cow wandering freely on the street and even more amazed to learn that his new employees dont understand a reference to The Bad News Bears.

In other words,Outsourced could be perfectly awful.

The fact that its neither embarrassing nor deeply offensive is a credit to the cast and the writers. The show mocks Todds blithe,well-meaning ignorance as much as it lampoons Indians trying to sell catalogue items like fake vomit and jiggle jugs.

Todd has to explain the Christmas mistletoe tradition to Asha Rebecca Hazlewood,a refined and beautiful employee who has trouble grasping the point of a holiday mistletoe belt buckle. After he explains,she is still bewildered,asking,This is how you celebrate the birthday of the son of your God?

The dialogue is punctuated with Bollywood music,and there are some sophomoric cultural jokes,but Outsourced tries not to be too demeaning. His employees quickly reveal themselves to be an endearing assortment with a fair share of misfits: theres Madhuri,a shy young woman who doesnt speak above a whisper; and Gupta,the talkaholic office pest. Basically,Mid America Novelties is a recession-era version of Dunder Mifflinif The Office had downsized and relocated to Mumbai.

South Asians are no longer an exotic minority that needs to be sheltered from comic stereotypes; for one thing,there is no easily recognised stereotype. The Indians,Pakistanis and other characters with roots on the subcontinent vary widely and its hard to think of a show that doesnt have one.

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Archie Panjabi won an Emmy this year for her role as a sexy,enigmatic private investigator on The Good Wife. Adhir Kalyan plays an acerbic,Oxford-educated personal assistant on Rules of Engagement. Mindy Kaling is a boy-crazy singleton on The Office,while Aziz Ansari is a sleazy small-town bureaucrat on Parks and Recreation. Sendhil Ramamurthy,who was a geneticist on Heroes,is now playing a playboy CIA operative on Covert Affairs.

The influx of South Asian talent echoes this countrys changing demographics. According to the Census Bureau,the South Asian population in the United States grew more than 100 percent from 1990 to 2000. More important,the children who were born in the United States after the wave of immigration in the mid-1960s are fully assimilated and a growing force in entertainment and politic and sometimes both,as was the case with Kal Penn,who left his role on House to work in the Obama White House. He has since returned to acting. Audiences in the age of the Internet and Slumdog Millionaire have evolved as well. Outsourced is a comedy about Indian capitalism that mostly makes fun of American decline. Thats a healthy sign.