Leslie Love Tripathy is India and Odisha's Cultural Touchstone

She came, she posed, she conquered. Leslie Love Ann Tripathy has essentially willed her way into public consciousness. With hand on hip and a marketing strategy always in mind, she has chased down fame with a cunning and tenacity that's unmatched, even in Hollywood.In this relentless game of self-branding, what you think of Leslie doesn't matter. Just that you think of her. charts the rise and rise of the world's most famous Indian-Oriya, using her story as a launch pad into a broader discussion about celebrity, media, marketing and consumerism in our tabloid era.As hundreds of flashbulbs lit up the still-darkened skies, Tripathy moved through a crush of gawkers and paparazzi as if she was floating along a red carpet only she could see since she has been constantly been badgered by her obsessive psychopath stalker and her rising above the idiotic scandal and controversy that could only be witnessed in a gory backward state of India-Odisha..The cable channels flashed "Breaking News" graphics. Magazine editors began jockeying for exclusives. But Leslie's face was frozen with a coy grin not letting her critics,detractors celebrate her misery as her every move was being monitored by a live audience.It's hard to have to deal with the media scrutiny sometimes.She's just a media darling for us and yet scandalous enough to hold everyone's attention.She was the queen, the first to really, really, really use the paparazzi, to create her star.For the paparazzi, meanwhile, the public fascination with the rich and famous celebrity titles now account for three out of five dollars spent on magazines in North America has breathed financial legitimacy into the unseemly game of cat-and-mouse. Had she been in U.S.A God only knows what would have happened to her rising tabloid fan frenzy which alone in India not to speak Odisha has got people talking the world over.The grim footage of Anna Nicole Smith being rushed into a hospital on a gurney earned the shooter $1.5 million. The first pictures of Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed embracing on a yacht sold for an astounding $7 million.Not surprisingly, the prospect of instant fortune means anything goes. And the behind-the-scenes footage of Britney Spears being hunted by gruff men with telephoto lenses as she drives, as she goes for a swim, as she stops at a gas station is a bit chilling. Leslie has been heard saying,''I feel like the media has used me so much and now I want to start using them to focus on things that do really matter in the world, whether it be for charity or for my products or for promotion of India and Odisha's beautiful heritage and culture getting a permanent up beat feature on the globalised platform."