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'Swetta Chetty' delighted about Clinton speech

Kanchana Suggu

From a distance, India often appears as a kaleidoscope of competing, perhaps superficial, images. Is it atomic weapons or ahimsa? A land struggling against poverty and inequality, or the world's largest middle-class society? Is it still simmering with communal tensions, or history's most successful melting pot? Is it Bollywood or Satyajit Ray? Shweta Shetty or Alla Rakha? Is it the handloom or the hyperlink?

-- Bill Clinton in his speech to Parliament, March 22, 2000

President Clinton's address startled Indian pop singer Shweta Shetty.

Even though he pronounced her name "Swetta Chetty".

Shetty, who lives in Hamburg, Germany, after her marriage, had no clue that she had found her way to Clinton's speech. "Are you kidding?" she asked rediff.com when we caught her on her mobile phone. "This will do wonders for my career!" she said.

Shetty, whose next album is scheduled for release in April, said she felt "great" that the president of the most powerful nation on the planet had chosen to mention India and her in the same breath.

"I have been working so hard. All of that has paid off." Then, in a sudden burst of patriotic fervour, she exclaimed: "I feel so proud for my country."

CLINTON VISITS INDIA: The complete coverage

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