“Kind of like the Indian Robert Redford and Brad Pitt, only crank up the handsome and rip off the knob.” That’s how Stephen Colbert described Amitabh Bachchan and Shah Rukh Khan in a segment Tuesday evening making fun of celebrity feuds. (Apparently there’s some ruckus about Big B not turning up at SRK’s New Year’s Eve party.) Trump v. Rosie and Angelina v. Madonna were the other two targets, but with a full half of the segment devoted to Bollywood clips and mangled names of Indian stars (“Let me tell you something: If Pree-etty Zinta is there, you better fucking show up”), the item — which wasn’t all that funny to begin with — came out in a weird space between derision and, ultimately, a kind of respect. Watch for yourself, but to my eyes this was a more sophisticated intro to Bollywood than anyone in the studio audience might have expected. I suspect we have an alternadesi mole somewhere on Colbert’s writing staff.

As you might expect the Indian press is all over it. “The short spoof may also have been aired keeping in mind the fact that the show is extremely popular amongst Indian Americans,” this report speculates.