May 22, 2026
BENGALURU – When Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi went to Rome on May 19 and gifted his Italian counterpart Giorgia Meloni a packet of toffee that rhymed with her surname, Indians like me could not help recalling an iconic jingle from the 80s: “Melody hai chocola-tee”, or “Melody is chocolatey” in Hindi.
“Modi brought us a gift. A very, very good toffee,” Ms Meloni says in a video selfie from Rome. The two leaders then giggle like teenagers when Mr Modi lifts the packet full of candy.
There was no quip, no punchline, no diplomatic announcement, but the video went viral, racking up 175 million views on Instagram – clearly striking a chord with Indians who grew up with the chewy caramel-encased chocolate manufactured by Parle Products.
With an easily recognisable yellow-brown wrapper uniquely twisted only on one side, Melody was priced slightly more than your regular sugar candy but less than Cadbury’s fancy eclairs. Even today, it costs only one rupee (one Singapore cent), and is found packed into glass bottles at local mom-and-pop shops.
The nostalgic toffee has now entered the meme-verse because it happens to sound like “Melodi”, a portmanteau of the two right-wing prime ministers’ names.
The leaders have leaned into it before.
In 2023, Ms Meloni had herself used the hashtag under a goofy selfie of herself with Mr Modi during the COP28 in Dubai. “Good friends at COP28 #Melodi,” she wrote.
“Meeting friends is always a delight,” Mr Modi said in perhaps an intended understatement.
The silliness got further oxygen after Ms Meloni shared another photo of her shaking Mr Modi’s hand and wagging a finger at him on the sidelines of the G-7 summit in Canada. “Italy and India, bound by a great friendship,” she captioned the post, which Mr Modi reposted.
The narrative has surely helped their public relations. Mr Modi has 107 million followers on X. Ms Meloni has 3.3 million. And every appearance together gets both internet savvy leaders even more visibility.
In the foreword to the Indian edition of Ms Meloni’s memoirs, published in 2025, Mr Modi calls her a “patriot” and writes that her belief in defending one’s cultural heritage, while engaging with the world on equal terms, “mirrors our own values”.
Italy is the fourth-largest European Union market for Indian exports, and the countries are now set to expand their partnerships in manufacturing, defence and critical minerals.
So, it helps to headline this bilateral relationship with the leaders’ personal chemistry. An Indian TV news producer said on a WhatsApp group I am part of that the Modi-Meloni meetings offered light-hearted optics beyond dull diplomatic handshakes, and risked no real-life spousal anger.
Perhaps Mr Modi and Ms Meloni can afford this banter – and mild flirtation – precisely because everyone knows of the impossibility of a real romance.
Ironically, one of Mr Modi’s main political opponents in India is also a woman of Italian origin: Mrs Sonia Gandhi, the widow of a former Congress prime minister and mother of Mr Rahul Gandhi, the leader of the opposition in Parliament. In the past, Mr Modi has frequently used her foreign origins to target the Congress party.
Within India, Mr Modi rarely displays this playful persona. His image is one of a serious, hardworking, nationalistic patriarch devoted to uplifting his country. He entered an arranged marriage when he was 17, but has always lived apart from his wife. The predominantly male Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the 100-year-old Hindu nationalist organisation that he is a part of, values celibacy.
So, Indians get to see the jocular side of Mr Modi only when he travels abroad. He has clocked a record 100 foreign trips in his 12 years in office as at this year.
His team initially promoted these tours as a sign of the world accepting the leader who once faced a diplomatic boycott from the US and UK for “severe violations of religious freedom” over his alleged role in the tragic 2002 anti-Muslim pogrom in his home state of Gujarat. Later, his trips became a way to showcase India’s growing global significance.
Mr Modi famously displays India’s soft power with big hugs. International media often comment on his propensity to pull leaders into an intense embrace. China’s Mr Xi Jinping, the United Arab Emirates’ Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Russia’s Mr Vladimir Putin, and France’s Mr Emmanuel Macron have all been recipients of the Modi bear hug.
The BBC in 2017 called him “the most physically demonstrative Indian leader in years”, after he turned US President Donald Trump’s formal handshake in his first term into a full cuddle. By 2025, Mr Trump was calling Mr Modi his great friend.
Supporters and detractors cannot take their eyes off the hugs and toffees, which make stodgy foreign policy easier to swallow.
But Mr Modi’s chumminess with world leaders does not always seem to have yielded actual benefits for India. Not in the indefinite negotiations on US tariffs, not when India was blindsided by Israel’s attack on Iran days after Mr Modi had a great reception with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and most certainly not when India had to seek permission from the US to import Russian oil.
While the Melody video made us all nostalgic and drove unexpected sales to Parle, it also distracted Indians from another viral video from Oslo, Norway. This May 18 video shows Mr Modi, true to his evasive style, walking away as Norwegian journalist Helle Lyng asks him why he would not take questions from “the freest press in the world”.
An Indian candy perhaps best suited for diplomacy amid a warring world today is Pan Pasand (betel leaf flavoured) by Ravalgaon. Its iconic 90s advertisement showed that once angry people popped one, they instantly became warm and friendly.