Thank goodness we have Indians working in the newsroom of The National, because a major Bollywood star died in the UAE this weekend, and the newspaper’s Western and Arab staffers were unlikely to have known him.

It shows up again what I have pondered a few times previously — the cultural divide between India and the rest of the world, but particularly the West and even moreso the U.S.

One of the many gaps is knowledge of Indian cinema, outside the subcontinent.

Clearly, Farooq Sheikh was a major person in Bollywood. But his sudden death in Dubai might have gone unnoticed for several hours, even a day, had not staffers from India alerted editors.

At one point, we had an Emirati on the story, and he grew up in a country only a few hours by plane from India, but he did not have a clue about Farooq Sheikh.

India may be unique in that it has a movie industry sophisticated enough and prolific enough that Hollywood films seem to have little or no impact there. Not sure that is the case anywhere else.

And the opposite is true, as well.

Even with Bollywood making some inroads into non-subcontinent culture, led by the most photogenic of India’s stars, I am going to make up a statistic and suggest that not one human in 100 — outside the subcontinent — had the slightest idea who Farooq Sheikh was, or what a consummate actor he apparently was, and what sort of range he apparently had.

Tom Cruise, Leonardo DiCaprio, George Clooney, Jennifer Lawrence … actors like that probably cannot wander around most of the world without being recognized. Except, perhaps, in India, land of 1.2 billion people and a very old culture. They have their own stars.

Even more than China, or Africa, or Southeast Asia, India is a world apart. All it needs, it has inside its borders.

Farooq Sheikh is another example of that.