Viewers got an extended earful—and eyeful—of this ugliness, with suggestions that Shilpa Shetty should go back to the slums. She has been called a "dog" before, she has been accused of touching others' food with her hands ("you don't know where those hands have been"), taunted and provoked— "Shilpa wants to be white", she is "the Indian", and did she live in a house or a shack?
The nastiness on the show is all White, even if not everyone White on the show is nasty. The uglier the others get with her, the classier Shilpa looks. The nastier the clashes get, the more viewers it attracts, climbing currently by half a million or so a day. More viewers means more money for Shilpa, and puts her more in the news than she's been all her life. After this, as she must have figured out, she'll certainly pack in the viewers next time she's in a film or on TV—and be paid accordingly.
Godot, At Last...? 
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown 
