By Arun Upadhayay 
New Delhi / Rome, May 20: There is a particular kind of chaos that breaks out on Indian social media when PM Narendra Modi and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni end up in the same room. Or in this case, the same ancient amphitheatre.
Modi landed in Rome on Tuesday night the last stop on a five-nation European tour that had already taken him through the UAE, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Norway. And before any press briefing or formal summit communique could set the tone, Meloni had already fired off a selfie on X. “Welcome to Rome, my friend!” Italian and Indian flags in the caption, the two of them grinning like they had just run into each other at a wedding. By the time most Indians woke up on Wednesday, the hashtag #Melodi was trending again. And this time, it came with chocolate toffees.
The Toffee That Broke the Internet
At some point during the day, Meloni posted two words on X: “Thank you for the gift.” No elaboration. No photograph of what the gift actually was. Just those five words and the Indian internet did the rest.
Within the hour, Parle Melody was everywhere. The caramel-and-chocolate candy that has been sitting in glass jars at every Indian kirana store since most of us were in school. Someone put together a mock-up of a Melody wrapper with “#Melodi” on it. Someone else made a reel. WhatsApp groups, obviously, went absolutely haywire. By afternoon, people were tagging Parle Products in posts suggesting the company had effectively just landed a diplomatic endorsement it never asked for.
No official from either the Indian or Italian side confirmed that Modi handed Meloni a bag of Melody toffees. That should be said clearly. But the unconfirmed gift, the hashtag, the brand name the overlap was too perfectly absurd to ignore, and Indian social media is constitutionally incapable of ignoring something like this. The #Melody and #Melodi posts merged into one long, delirious feed of memes, edits, and old Bollywood clips repurposed for the occasion.
That said, this is not the first time the Melodi phenomenon has erupted. It has a whole timeline now.
Three Years of “Melodi”
It started at COP28 in Dubai, December 2023. Meloni posted a selfie with Modi and captioned it “Good friends at COP28 #Melodi” a portmanteau of their surnames that someone, somewhere, coined and the Italian PM decided to just run with. The post hit 17 million views almost immediately. Indians online lost their minds. The memes wrote themselves.
Then came the G7 summit at Borgo Egnazia in June 2024. Meloni posted a short video both of them waving at the camera, Modi beaming with the caption “Hi friends, from #Melodi.” Modi reposted it and added a message in Italian praising India-Italy ties. The internet, predictably, treated this as confirmation of something it had largely invented. AI-generated videos of Modi singing heartbroken Bollywood songs every time Meloni appeared with another world leader started racking up millions of views. The whole thing was equal parts absurd and genuinely warm.
At the G20 in Johannesburg last November, they announced a joint initiative against terrorism financing. Still, people were mostly focused on the selfie.
And now Rome. Except this time, unlike the sideline meetings at multilateral summits, this is Modi’s first dedicated bilateral visit to Italy. A proper state visit. And what is being formalised here is considerably more than a hashtag.
What Rome Actually Means
After the Colosseum dinner on Tuesday night yes, Meloni took him to the Colosseum the two leaders sat down for formal talks on Wednesday. The headline from those discussions: India and Italy are upgrading their relationship to a Special Strategic Partnership. Annual heads-of-government summits. A trade target of 20 billion euros by 2029, up from where things currently stand. Agreements being signed across maritime transport, agriculture, higher education, critical minerals, and even museum cooperation, which is a quietly significant area given Italy’s concerns about antiquities and India’s own growing assertiveness on cultural repatriation.
According to Reuters, the joint declaration being adopted during this visit also sets the stage for stronger alignment on the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) the connectivity project that India sees as its long-game answer to China’s Belt and Road infrastructure push. Italy, given where it sits geographically, is a natural and necessary partner in making IMEC work. Rome’s ports are not incidental to this conversation.
Over 1,000 Indian and Italian companies already operate in each other’s markets. The two governments are talking about aligning on artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and advanced manufacturing. There is a Joint Strategic Action Plan for 2025-2029 that both sides are reviewing. Modi also visited the FAO headquarters in Rome, putting India’s multilateral commitments on record.
On Ukraine, the two leaders are expected to exchange views rather than announce a shared position which is diplomatic language for: they probably don’t fully agree, but they respect each other enough to keep talking. Meloni has held Italy’s NATO line firmly. Modi has held India’s line on dialogue and de-escalation. These are not incompatible positions, but they require careful management.
The Indo-Pacific comes up too. Italy has been quietly expanding its engagement in the region, and Meloni’s government has been one of the more consistent European advocates for India’s role in that architecture.
The Bigger Shift Nobody Is Covering Loudly Enough
Here is the thing about this visit that gets a bit lost in the Melody meme coverage. Europe needs India right now perhaps more urgently than at any point in the last two decades. The geopolitical floor has shifted. American reliability is no longer something European capitals can take for granted. China’s economic footprint across the continent is increasingly viewed with suspicion. And India, with its scale, its democratic credentials, and its strategic ambiguity, looks like a genuinely useful partner to a continent trying to recalibrate.
Italy has leaned into this harder than most. The EU-India trade deal delayed for years, finally concluded earlier this year had Rome’s active support. Meloni’s government lobbied for it. That matters.
The Modi-Meloni relationship, whatever social media has made of it, has been remarkably consistent in converting warmth into actual institutional architecture. The Strategic Partnership was established in 2023. By 2026, it is being upgraded to a Special Strategic Partnership with a specific trade number attached and a specific annual summit mechanism built in. That is not nothing. That is a government actually following through on what it says in joint statements.
Back to the Toffees
For now, the Melody jokes will keep circulating through the rest of the day and probably the week. The Colosseum backdrop will fuel more content. Someone will find a way to stitch together the old Bollywood songs again.
As it turns out, the most human detail of this entire visit the five-word post about a mystery gift, the brand name coincidence, the nostalgic toffee that somehow became a symbol of something says more about how Indians follow foreign policy than anything in the joint declaration will. We watch heads of state the way we watch characters in a long-running drama. We notice the small things. We remember the hashtag from three years ago. We take a 50-paise candy and turn it into international relations commentary.
That is not a bad thing. It keeps people paying attention.
What Modi is building in Rome this week is the kind of relationship that will matter when trade routes need clearing, when maritime security in the Indian Ocean needs a European partner, when India wants a credible voice inside Brussels without having to fight for one. Meloni has consistently given him that. The dinner at the Colosseum was a gesture. The 20-billion-euro trade target is a commitment.
Whether the gift that prompted “Thank you” from the Italian Prime Minister was a pouch of Parle Melody, or a handcrafted silver piece from Maharashtra, or something else entirely, the larger point holds: this is a friendship that has become a foreign policy. And it is one that India should take seriously memes, toffees, and all.
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- Arun Upadhayay
- Arun Upadhayay
- Arun Upadhayay
- Arun Upadhayay
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