While my cameraman was busy filming the odd twin gifts of fish and TV being placed in the courtyard of the wedding venue, I shot an off-the-cuff question at an elderly 65 year old patriarch of the family in Bengali. "What music do you play during weddings here?"

Without batting an eyelid, the old bearded gentleman in a white kurta replied: "We play the music of Michael Jackson."

I thought I was hallucinating and that all the non stop travelling and filming had taken a toll on me! I repeated: "Huh..what did you say you listened to? Michael Jackson did you say?"

"Yes, at our weddings we play the cassettes of Michael Jackson," said the old man.

By then the bride and groom had emerged and Michael Jackson popped out of the TV screen belting out an appropriate love song in Bengali - "Pore na chokher polok...ki tomar ruper jhalak" - translated in English it means "Your beauty is so breathtaking that I cannot even blink my eyes". Michael Jackson was so popular in Bangladesh that he had been dubbed in Bengali! So you had King of Pop dancing to top of the chart local songs.

Not only had Michael Jackson crossed continents and captured the imagination of the people in the cities of South Asia but he had also been locally packaged to add value to the regional imagination. Michael Jackson had become a symbol of what global icons satellite TV could produce.

Author and inventor Arthur Clark, in an interview for the same film, had told me that the satellite television was the second swiftest revolution in history. Looking back now, I think that Michael Jackson was firmly etched in that history.