Desis Really *are* Everywhere.

My favorite news tidbit from the past week:

Times of India
NRIs send home a whopping $21 billion
Himanshi Dhawan
[ Tuesday, June 13, 2006 01:09:16 amTIMES NEWS NETWORK ]

NEW DELHI: For Indians, the umbilical cord with home is never severed. India is the largest recipient of remittances by overseas workers, estimated at $21 billion -- up from almost 150% since 1995, says a study by investment bankers J P Morgan. The Indian diaspora is estimated at 20 billion. [more]

Boy. Had I known that there were that many desis around the world... more than 3 times the world's population, even, I would really feel like there are desis everywhere. I mean, daaaamn!

And in another story about this tremendous diaspora, here's an interesting piece about West Indian cricket, and the emergence of Indo-Caribbeans on the teams, starting in the fifties. It's an interesting read, but coming from an Indian paper, something tells me that the patronizing tone I sense isn't just in my imagination. Still, there are some interesting historical bits that may be of interest.

But if there are really 20 billion of us outside of India, a couple of questions:

1) How many of us are there in India?

2) And beyond that, shouldn't we have taken over all the cricket teams by now?