It's a sultry Sunday PM in Mumbai. I'm sipping Tiger beer and watching and listening to Led Zeppelin sing "Kashmir" on a program called Gods of Guitar on VH1.

Tiger beer is produced by the Singapore-listed Asia Pacific Breweries (APB), a joint venture between Fraser and Neave (a pan-Asian consumer group) and Heineken (a Dutch brewing company). Led Zep is, of course, an English rock band born before I was. Kashmir is arguably in India (I drove there a few months back without my passport, so it must be). VH1 is owned by Viacom, an American media conglomerate that runs MTV. Now, does this make me R=G? Very.

But I'm not alone. Do this simple exercise: Look at the back collar of your shirt and check where it's made. I doubt it came from the geography where you are right now. Unless, of course, you are sitting in L.A. and wearing a tight tank top from Dov Charney's American Apparel, which defies common R=G logic (or broadly, collaboration of global entities) and vertically integrates its entire clothing line in L.A.'s downtown very profitably (I just love their quirky approach!).

Not everyone is drawing boundaries to their downtowns. Bharti Airtel, the largest mobile operator in India, is trying to marry up by courting Africa's MTN. Apparently, one of the world's largest mobile phone operators, Vodafone, is exploring a bid for MTN as well. Meanwhile, the bride, MTN, is focused pretty closely on Africa and Iran and counts more mobile subscribers than Bharti. India added 10m mobile subscribers in March 2008, surpassing America as the world's second-largest mobile market. In doing this deal, Bharti expects to translate some of its dominant India advantages to Africa and make more money.

Amusingly, The Economist put a lion and tiger next to each other when it first ran the Bharti-MTN story, each animal representing its respective region: Africa and India. They got that wrong: The lion is, in fact, the national animal of England, home of Vodafone. A springbok antelope is the fault-less rep of Africa (it's the national animal of South Africa), but it wouldn't be nice putting a tiger and antelope next to one another for an M&A deal, especially when the antelope is fatter than the tiger.

However, such bland regional clustering also doesn't work. I looked up Bharti's latest shareholding pattern -- Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, Citigroup, Europacific Growth Fund, and other Foreign Institutional Investors control 25% of the company (an accurate representation would look like a zoo). I'm sure I'll find sufficient R=G confusion for Vodafone and MTN or any of the top 20 mobile operators. Apart from mobile phones, the common link between Bharti and Vodafone is the American IT company, IBM. Bharti outsources its IT operations to IBM (a $750M deal -- one of IBM's largest outsourcing deals). Vodafone followed suit and also works with IBM (a $1.5 billion deal).

The deal (if it happens) will make the duo a tougher global competitor to Vodafone and several other mobile operators. Whether I care or not, and how much I care, depends on who I am at which point of time. If I were AT&T or China Mobile, what would I be thinking? I'd of course be worried, and will be deploying my M&A team to explore more global options for growth. If I were a shareholder, my views would depend on where my money squats. If I were running for political office, my views would depend on the constituents I represent. If I were an employee, then it would depend on the company I work for or contract with. If I were a green activist, I'd still twitch my eyebrows as the world would continue to burn-and-brrr anyway. If I were IBM, I'd simply smile and be happy. If I were a consumer, I don't really care -- just simply give me a better deal. OK?