 My name is Sam Miller. I'm 48. I've lived in India now for the last eight years. My name's Naisha. I'm 26 years old. I settled in India three years ago. My name is Jack Linoche. I'm from the Netherlands. I came to India two years ago. I moved with my husband to New Delhi. My name is Gilles Shuyen. I'm French and I've been living in Delhi now for the last 15 years. My name is Peter Kronschnabel. I'm the president of BMW in India. I'm since August 2006 in India and I'm originally from Munich, Germany. The image I had of India was the general idea. Like crowded, overcrowded, chaotic. Full of challenges. I'm sure the opposite from the world where I was coming from. I had no knowledge about everyday life, about the people. But my knowledge was about texts when I came. I came from a family who travelled around Europe but would never have considered going anywhere further. So if anything, it would have been India, Delhi, Delhi, dead country poverty. But beyond that I hadn't really thought about it. The first time that I came here when I was this young, I only can remember poor people living on the street and dogs who weren't fed well or weren't fed enough. That's sort of what I had in my memory. I'm basically a journalist. I worked as a Silesia correspondent for Dutch newspaper Telegraph Nederland. And then I was in the foreign desk in Nederland, in Amsterdam. So they sent me here. I originally came here as a sort of BBC journalist. We were newly married and I wanted to move here. I came here for a variety of different reasons. Professionally because I needed to change my job and wanted to do work on the ground in the environment sector and with a social enterprise. And personally I wanted to recently connect back with my roots and learn Hindi and experience India. I moved to India around, now it's going to be six years ago. And I actually came first to study. I did my MA in sociology from here. And then I just happened to stay back. From Lamjit's college I've done economic here. And while I was doing my study, I saw like in the newspaper these days also, India is growing up. So I thought I have seen the opportunity, the chance as a business. We wanted to do something different. We wanted to move to a country which is one of the developing countries, like China, Brazil, India. And in the end we chose for India. I got a job in the cultural section of the French Embassy in Tourangsebleau here for two years. And after that I stayed on because I decided to do a PhD about India. So I got a scholarship for that. India for me was an attractive place because it's where I was born and also somewhere that I've heard a lot about as a growing market. My mother thought I'd completely lost the plot. I mean India is somewhere she'd never dream of coming to even now. But I think more so as well because I was coming out to run a little camp in the middle of nowhere. We were overjoyed because we've been waiting for this for 15 or 20 years. There are very few jobs in India. And even this one we were told that we couldn't possibly come. They had someone else for the job. They cried and cried for about six weeks until the miracle happened and he was given the job. The people of India were a part of the tourism industry in the world. People came here to see its beauty, its culture, its culture and its ways of life. The people of India invited them to visit India and welcome them warmly. It's a great opportunity for them to go on a business trip and enjoy their life. They're taking India to their home and those people have been accepted. They have become part of our history, part of our culture, part of our civilization, so to speak. So that there is a degree of receptivity to other people's cultures. In the 16th century, up until the beginning of the colonial period, India was the richest place in the world. It had two harvests or the diamonds in the world, much of the gold, the spice trade, the textiles. And the Tudors came here not as part of some sort of aid project but because this is where the cash was. India had a brief period of poverty at the end of the colonial period and the beginning of the post-colonial period. Now it's reverting to its natural state at the centre of world trade. It's almost become trendy to come here. I think in the old days coming to India was like a huge decision. Why would you go there? And it's a bit unusual. Now everyone knows someone who knows someone who's gone to India. There are endless people, friends of friends of friends who get in touch and say, so and so, told me to get in touch with you. We're planning to come out wanting to find out more about it. It's built up a kind of steam of its own coming to live here. But in fact people come from a huge range of reasons. It could be because they're married to an Indian, it could be for business reasons and obviously there are so many more business people coming here. Others will come here for reasons, you know, they want to study yoga or they want to study Sanskrit or they're interested in Hinduism. They're interested in music and in dance. There's a whole range of sort of cultural traditions which still command an incredible amount of interest in the West. India is one of the fastest growing economies globally. And obviously if you look down the line the next 10, 15 years India will become one of the most important economies in the world. As a multinational if you're not present in India you all miss the boat, you have to be here right now. So there's a lot of focus on India. India is an attractive now site for investments of all sorts and it's much more obviously inexpensive to run a business establishment, to run a trade establishment and to run now of course educational centers of all kinds. Secondly I think the civic communities have improved dramatically so that housing is of high quality and roads are a little better and living conditions are generally agreeable compared to what they were a decade ago. And finally I think the most probably one of the most important attractions is the fact that there is a lot more to do so to speak. My parents left India when I was about three years old because for them the work environment was better. Job prospects were much safer there in the UK than they were in India at the time. We've actually done the reverse. We've come here with a three year old because the jobs prospects are better here in India than they were in London. The medical facilities are much better here. Schooling is of much higher quality in my opinion. I personally wanted to delve into the psyche and the philosophy and the spirituality in this country and then there's a side of it where as the older you get you get closer to your parents and grandparents so I wanted to learn the language and get back and get in touch so it made sense. We have bicycles, we have guides and then we ask people to come with us and we show them Old Delhi. It's a three hour tour and we show them the main places like monuments and the people, the places everybody knows. But mainly we also try to show them a small hidden place. The real nice small alleys, the places where people usually don't come because they don't know how to get there or they are a little bit scared. Just because I love the country, I love travelling in this country you meet incredible people, you see amazing sights. I find it fascinating and I just want to share that with people. Yes what I do fundamentally is sell holidays but I don't look at the bottom line, what I want to do is create an experience so that everybody who comes here goes back feeling like I do about the country. It's a fedrushni pani kitare. Girdhaya, Asmanse. Up ki taraf. Korgheri, Saams, Liji. Corporate are Sichurde. Studios in Delhi, in Saqeet and in Nassau-Dodin Cliffs. So I teach modern as well as like fusion when I work with professional dancers. I do shows with my own dance company called INSTEP. I do shows for corporate events. I teach in other institutions, I'm a guest faculty at the National School of Drama. I'm a foodie, you can say so. So I thought like let's try to do something in hospitality. And I found out that there were less bakeries and good place where you can have a good sandwich or a bread and that's why I decided to do something with that and in the end it became a bagel's café. In India, still Korean food is very, not the popular thing, it's true but what I found in India also the customer has a right and many people came from abroad or they already went abroad. So they know the real taste. So I should focus on more eventing, more Korean tea then we will grab the customer. You see so many more international brands coming up and international cuisines coming into Delhi and that's a good thing, I really like it. This country has changed in the three years. I've certainly been here as well. Just if you take small aspects like shopping, in 2007 I think there were a handful of malls in the suburb of the city where you'd have to go out, track out for one hour just to get there and you'd probably come across five or six big brands, international brands. Now the malls are all over the place, you can get everything from high-end luxury to day-to-day brands. So it changes, this city changes on a very regular basis and I think every year that I've been here it's becoming less and less of a hardship and more and more of a familiar place. There's now malls rather than just shops in Konok Place and Cannes Market but the kind of things that I love about this country, the culture, the calligraphy, the dance, the mysticism, the history, all the things that attract me are still there. It doesn't as if the old has been replaced by the new, it's just that a new layer has come like a concentric circles on a tree, it's more like that. One of the reasons for my wife to give labour here is because the hospitals are very good. There are a few private hospitals in Delhi and I found that the service was really good. It's very professional and actually I feel that it's better than in Holland. When we knew we were having a baby we thought about going back to the UK and then we realised that the healthcare here is much better. It's more patient-orientated, facilities are better, the hospital is much better than the one where we had our first child as well. So for us it was never really a decision to go back to the UK. I don't feel unsafe here, no. That's really a thing that is actually very positive living here. I didn't expect that I would feel so safe here. Actually more safe than I felt in Amsterdam sometimes. Physically I feel safer than I've ever felt in any other country. I've heard Bombay and other places are incredibly safe. I think I've thought about that once in a while because you're in DC, it's two o'clock in the morning and you do look over your shoulder and you don't go to certain parts of the town. Here I feel completely safe. I'll take an auto any time of day and I think a lot of it is due to the... Even though there is violence and there is urbanisation the values stick with people and so crime doesn't seem to be as prevalent here. I just think it's wonderful to be here now where instead of a kind of sealed off environment India is waking up and again taking full advantage of all of their resources, especially their people resources and moving ahead instead of, you know, they're very active with business and commerce and certainly in the computer field so I'm finding it to be a great time to be here because no one is sitting there saying I'm in a poor country, they're saying I'm in a country that's going somewhere. In India you've got the feeling that you're really living. They're very good days sometimes and they're sometimes really bad days but it makes it very interesting. And I really like the business vibe that is going on here. It's much more than in Holland, for instance. Most Western people come here and they expect India to run like the West and so they will have to be done in three weeks and if it's not they get very stressed but I was like three weeks, let's say six, it was done in five. I had the help of a great chartered accountant who works with quite a few expats here and knows the system so I left everything pretty much in his hands, turned up when I needed to turn up and it was done. So I came in kind of with a western, you know, mentality of just, you know, you set deadlines, you do things, you tell someone to do it, you expect it to be done and here it doesn't necessarily work that way. There are two things. I mean, first of all, when you're a good leader you have to actually compete with somebody. I strongly... At the end of the day I must say we all have a good team. We have formed in the company a great team of expatriates and locals and it's not about where you come from or who you are, it's more about I need your support in order to achieve the goal and we all need to work at a certain level in order to achieve our company's goal. Indian life is a very colourful life, full of challenges, opportunities and it's never boring. I mean, it's colourful in, like, colours. If you look around you see all colours of the rainbow but it's colourful of the cultures live here, colourful of different mindsets, colourful of... name it and it's here. I mean, everything you're looking for in life you can find in India. Well, it's a challenging place where to stay most definitely I think that's what's the beauty of it. It's a chaotic place and a noisy one but I think that's also what keeps your company throughout your day and whatever you never feel alone, like where I'm from it's like silence all over. The fact that there's so much around that you're never alone or isolated here that there will always be someone who knocks on your door whether it's neighbours who are popping in to see how you are that aspect I think is not something you get in the UK now. There's certain moments you have in India where they remind you that you're in India as opposed to just outside of your comfort zone and outside of home. So I had an experience back in October where I lost my bag with my money, my passport, my laptop, my everything, my entire life in a bag in an auto and a week later the auto driver called me up and returned it to me with every single penny I counted for and that was an experience that dramatically changed the way I understand India because it's what I've always heard growing up. It's a fun aspect of the Indian culture that we can probably take back because in Australia everything Indian is in fashion and Bollywood dancing classes were on offer even before I came to India but I thought no no, I'll do it, I'll learn it from the real expert. I moved into our house. We also did a puja and an opening and I have also a garnish at the entrance and I do believe in these kind of things. Actually I don't know if I really believe in it but I don't want to push luck so I also did of course a puja here where my shop opened and all things where my son was born and you know, yeah, yeah. I wear my little black band here to protect against evil and I try if possible but I'm not very disciplined to go. My pandemic told me I should go to a temple on a Thursday and do a little puja so I try and do that. We want our children to grow up here. They are born here, both of them. I have two children, one son, he's two and one daughter, she's four. We got married here in Goa. We want to have more children and we also want it to happen here. So no, my wife has her own business. I have my own business and it's just in the first phase so I want to make it big. I have my own business. I want to make this a huge success and as I told you it's like a concept another standalone restaurant so I really want to work on that and my husband also set up his own company in real estate last year so he's also just starting. So we'll definitely stay here for much longer time. Endless friendships, experiences places, memories that are on the whole fantastic. Life changing. I've spent the last 25 years either living here or spending a lot of time here and so it's become a major part of my life more than half my life and I've learned a great deal. To take back from India, the warmth, the colours, the generosity of the people, the helpful, the open-mindedness and last but not least and actually the most important thing for me I take lifetime friendship. I have a couple of good friends gained in India and I'm sure this will be this is a lifetime friendship. There's a hidden side of India that most people don't know and only when living here in India for long periods it's a treasure you'll find. So moving to another country that means maybe I find this treasure again but I have my doubts. I think India is a special thing which you cannot find in other countries around the world. Sometimes I forget that I'm a foreigner so maybe I'm walking around and I'm doing things and I don't realise that I'm actually North Indian and like you know if I go especially for work maybe I go to various villages and so on and then like you know maybe people start looking at me you know they start staring and I'm always like why are they looking at me like whatever like you know am I looking so strange and then I realise oh yeah I'm not Indian. I feel a foreigner now when I'm in France when I'm in the West I mean I don't really relate I feel very much see this thing you know like it's also because of my PhD I read a lot about identity and being Indian what is being Indian you know like he's speaking sometimes when I speak to my friends here they feel you're more Indian than us so the package I mean the white skin and the body I mean it's nothing I noticed I started doing this really when I got an answer last month I was in Netherlands and my parents they asked me something and I said like maybe and they told me like Jack what are you doing you've become Indian when people write profiles of me they seem to think that I'm becoming Indian and I can't see it myself I was described as the only living Punjabi Scotsman the other day I was sitting back with all my chaapoi my roti and my parathas and achar and my goats yeah I feel Indian I feel I feel yeah I feel Indian I feel Indian Namaskar Namaskar How are you? How are you? I'm fine I can't explain it just feels like home I think everybody has some kind of internal feeling of home and for some reason India feels that way to me I feel that India is my home which is quite crazy but most people who know me like Indian friends here think it's probably due to past lives but when I've never felt settled anywhere even in the UK I've lived in Canada I've lived in Austria I've lived in France and yet as soon as I landed in India just over three years ago and I got to the jungle it was the first time I felt settled I didn't want to be rushing off anywhere and visiting and travelling I just feel at home From the 16th century up until the beginning of the colonial period India was the richest place in the world it had two harvests or the diamonds in the world much of the gold the spice trade the textiles and the tutors came here not as part of some sort of aid project but because this is where the cash was India had a brief period of poverty at the end of the colonial period and the beginning of the post-colonial period now is reverting to its natural state at the centre of world trade it's almost become trendy to come here I think in the old days coming to India was like a huge decision why would you go there and it's a bit unusual now everyone knows someone who knows someone who's gone to India it's built up a kind of steam of its own coming to live here but in fact people come from huge range of reasons it could be because they're married to an Indian it could be for business reasons and obviously there's so many more business people coming here others will come here for reasons you know they've studied they want to study yoga or they want to study Sanskrit or they're interested in Hinduism they're interested in music and in dance a whole range of sort of cultural traditions which still command an incredible amount of interest in the West India is one of the fastest growing economies globally and obviously if you look down the line the next 10-15 years India will become one of the most important economies in the world as a multinational if you're not present in India you will miss the boat you have to be here right now so a lot of there's a lot of focus on India I just think it's wonderful to be here now where instead of a kind of sealed off environment India is waking up and again taking full advantage of all of their resources especially their people resources and moving ahead instead of you know they're very active with business and commerce and certainly in the computer field so I'm finding it to be a great time to be here because no one's sitting there saying I'm in a poor country they're saying I'm in a country that's going somewhere my parents left India when I was about three years old because for them the work environment was better job prospects were much safer there in the UK than they were in India at the time we've actually done the reverse we've come here with a three-year-old because the jobs prospects are better here in India than they were in London the medical facilities are much better here schooling is of much higher quality in my opinion I love the country I love travelling in this country you meet incredible people you see amazing sights I find it fascinating and I just want to share that with people you know yes what I do fundamentally is sell holidays but I don't look at the bottom line what I want to do is create an experience so that everybody who comes here goes back feeling like I do about the country you see so many more international brands coming up and international cuisines coming into Delhi and that's a good thing I really like it this country has changed in the three years I've certainly been here as well just if you take small aspects like shopping in 2007 I think there were a handful of malls in the suburb of the city where you'd have to go out, track out for one hour just to get there then you'd probably come across five or six big brands, international brands now the malls are all over the place you can get everything from high-end luxury to day-to-day brands one of the reasons for my wife to give labour here is because the hospitals are very good there are a few private hospitals in Delhi and I found that the service was really good when we knew we were having a baby we thought about going back to the UK and then we realised that the healthcare here is much better, it's more patient-orientated facilities are better the hospital is much better than the one where we had our first child as well so for us it was never really a decision to go back to the UK I don't feel unsafe here, no that's really a thing that is actually very positive living here I didn't expect that I would feel so safe here actually more safe than I felt in Amsterdam sometimes but physically I feel safer than I've ever felt in any other country I've heard Bombay and other places are incredibly safe I think I've thought about that once in a while because you're in DC it's two o'clock in the morning and you do look over your shoulder and you don't go to certain parts of the town here I feel completely safe I'll take an auto any time of day life is a very colourful life full of challenges, opportunities and it's never boring I mean it's colourful like colours if you look around you see all colours of the rainbow but it's colourful of the culture that lives here colourful of different mindsets colourful of name it and it's here, everything you're looking for in life you can find it in here the fact that there's so much around that you're never alone or isolated here there will always be someone who knocks on your door whether it's neighbours who are popping in to see how you are that aspect I think is not something you get in the UK now when we moved into our house we also did a puja and an opening and I have also garnished the entrance and I do believe in these kind of things so I also did of course a puja here when my shop opened and all things when my son was born and you know, yeah, yeah it's a fun aspect of the Indian culture that we can probably take back because in Australia everything Indian is in fashion and Bollywood dancing classes were on offer even before I came to India but I thought no, no, I'll do it I'll learn it from the real experts When living here in India for a long period it's a treasure you'll find and moving to another country that means maybe I find this treasure again because I have my doubts I think India is a special thing which you cannot find in other countries around the world I take back from India the warmth, the colours, the generosity of the people the helpful, the open mindedness and last but not least and actually the most important thing for me I take lifetime friendship I have a couple of good friends gained in India and I'm sure this will be this is a lifetime friendship