India's "soft power"

Some time ago, I heard Sashi Tharoor's talk on this topic in TED India. Listen to it.

Given the context of TED, I really liked it. I agree to most things he spoke about.

Living outside my country, I am faced with questions about my country very regularly. I try to explain things to people with a caveat that it is my "personal perspective" because I feel that I dont do justice to India's diversity by giving a generalized explanation.

As I travel around Europe, I really EXPERIENCE this 'soft power' of India.
I have been travelling in Europe for the past 4-5 years so I have a time frame that allows me to compare the 'before' and 'now.' Some of my experiences:

• There was always 1 vegetarian main dish served during lunch in my workplace. However, EARLIER, this was often restricted to Italian pasta/ Thai or some improvised dishes from other cuisines. The increasing activism about 'vegetarianism' has been pushing our caterer to give some more thought to the vegetarian dishes.
  
  Our caterer decided to seek public opinions, suggestions for recipies for this and over time, there are days when I really look forward to lunch. NOW, many of these vegetarian dishes are 'indian' / india inspired.
  
  Further, almost on a daily basis there is a side dish of lentils and rice; the seasoning counter includes 'Kurkuma' (curry powder - a mix of different spices and turmeric powder) and Chilli poweder too.
  For an India, the availability of 'dal-chawal' in Europe is a blessing right?

• Earlier, Indian restaurants were a common sight primarily in big cities and places frequented by Indians.
  I was very pleasantly surprised to find an Indian restaurant in Bratislava - Slovakia (Eastern Europe). I never imagined stereotypical 'spicy' Indian food would be something people in Slovakia would like to eat.  

• The Indian restaurants in small German towns around where I live are almost always full with locals.

• In Florence (few years ago), my colleagues and I were having trouble finding something vegetarian in a restaurant. We see an 'Indian' looking guy walk upto us and speak to me in Hindi asking if we needed help to find something. Whoa!
  
  He helped me order a traditional bread soup with vegetables. Yumm.
  
  Later learnt that he was from Nepal, married to an Italian and lives in Florence since.
  
  A couple of days later, in a pizzeria, the lady who took the order from us was very curious to know if we were from 'india.' She told us the 'pizza maker' in the pizzeria was from India :D :D

• Earlier this month, V and I was in Kiruna - northern Sweden - 145 kilometers north of the Arctic circle, searching for something to eat other than Reindeer meat. We came across a Chinese restaurant and walked in to look at the menu. We could not comprehend much off a menu in Swedish. I tried to tell the owner that I am looking for something vegetarian which also excluded sea food. The owner tries to converse a bit in his Swedish-Chinese English. Then takes a pause and asks, "where are you from?"
  We: "India"
  Owner: "So you speak Hindi?"
  We: "Yes."
  Owner: "To aap machli bhi nahi khata hai?" (so you dont even eat fish?)
  We: "Nahi. Sirf sabzi" (No. Only vegetables)
  Me: "To aap Hindi kaise boltey hain?" (how come you speak Hindi?)
  Owner: "Guess kariye, hum kahaan sey hain." (Guess where I am from)
  Me: "Dharamsala?"
  Owner: "No"
  V: "Darjeeling?"
  Owner: "No. Hum Kolkatta sey hain" (No. Im from Calcutta)
  
  The rest was easy. We got ourselves a nice custom made, vegetarian soup, fried rice and noodles.
  Would have never imagined talking in Hindi to ANYONE in a town in the Arctic Circle - let alone an India of Chinese origin.

• The owner of our Bed and Breakfast accomodation in Stockholm (the base camp of our travels in Sweden) at some point was involved with an Indian lady.
  
  When we returned to this accomodation from Kiruna, we find some bread and Dal (cooked by the owner) waiting for us. phew! Dal made by a Swedish guy. It was really very good. Much like the home-made dal we eat at home. All the right ingredients.

• We get a map of Sweden - among all other advertisements, there is one with a picture of Deepika Padukone - brand ambassador of Tissot watches.

• When we arrive back in Frankfurt airport - digital kiosks of an India Circus week greet us.

• In many Chemists I find a lot of Ayurvedic medicines available over the counter. They tend to be general wellness medicines, however, I never saw them before. Nobody knew of a stream of medicine known as Ayurveda before.

• I wont even get into the well known facts of Bollywood stars having huge fan clubs abroad. I have often watched popular Bollywood movies on German TV with Sharukh Khan speaking German :) If only I could speak the language as well as he does ;)

All real life examples of the kind of 'soft power' Sashi Tharoor speaks of. All these Indians/people from the sub-continent I have bumped into in Europe - running their businesses, speak the local language fluently. they have understood who their primary audience is; understood this audience enough to know how to cater to them...fascinating!!