The True Love Is Sharing Your Popcorn

I once heard someone say that true love is sharing your popcorn. Not offering a few pieces out of politeness. Actually handing over the bucket without thinking twice about it.

At first, I laughed at how absurdly simple that sounded. Then I thought about it a little more. People guard popcorn with surprising seriousness. Sharing it usually means comfort. Familiarity. Trust. The kind of silent understanding where nobody needs to ask permission anymore.

Oddly enough, the thought came back to me while I was reading about India and Israel.

And the more I have written about India and Israel, the more I think the relationship between these two countries resembles that kind of quiet familiarity. Not the dramatic version of friendship governments perform during state visits, but the slower kind built over decades through films, migration, food, memory, technology, tourism, and ordinary human interaction.

Most people describe India-Israel relations through missiles, intelligence cooperation, agriculture, or trade. Those things matter, obviously. But they are only part of the story.

The more interesting story is happening somewhere else entirely. It is happening in Bollywood archives, in Israeli homes where old Hindi songs still play, in cafés in Kasol filled with Hebrew conversations, in Indian students watching Fauda late at night, and in the strange cultural comfort two very different societies have slowly developed with one another over time.

That is the relationship I want to talk about.

Every serious relationship has its origin story. India and Israel have cavalry charges, covert arms shipments, agricultural partnerships, and billion-dollar trade corridors. These are important moments in the relationship. They are the photographs leaders frame and diplomats revisit during speeches. A flower named after a prime minister. A wreath laid at a soldier’s grave. A handshake at an agricultural fair that later reshaped irrigation practices across Indian states.

But relationships are rarely defined by ceremonial moments alone.

What people remember most often comes later, during ordinary evenings when nobody is performing for an audience. You learn more about someone while watching a film together than you do during a formal introduction. Shared habits matter more than grand declarations.

Writing about the India-Israel relationship from my small corner of central India, I have slowly come to believe that these two countries have been quietly sharing their popcorn for generations without fully realizing it themselves.

The Women Who Helped Build Bollywood

One detail completely changed the way I looked at the relationship between Indian and Jewish communities.

In the early decades of Indian cinema during the 1920s and 1930s, many Hindu and Muslim families considered acting socially unacceptable for women. Film producers needed actresses, but very few women from conservative households were willing to appear on screen.

Jewish actresses stepped into that space when few others would.

Sulochana, born Ruby Myers, became one of the biggest stars of India’s silent film era. She was reportedly among the highest-paid actors in the country at the time. Pramila, born Esther Victoria Abraham, became the first Miss India in 1947. Nadira, born Florence Ezekiel, later became one of Hindi cinema’s most memorable screen presences through films like Shree 420 and Pakeezah.

They helped shape the emotional language of Indian cinema at a time when Bollywood itself was still being invented.

That story becomes even more fascinating decades later.

After the creation of Israel in 1948, many members of the Bene Israel Jewish community emigrated from India to Israel. But they carried Bollywood with them. Hindi songs, film dialogues, and old movie traditions became part of how many Indian Jewish families preserved memory and identity in a new country.

I remember reading accounts of Bene Israel families in cities like Ashdod and Lod gathering to watch old Hindi films together, even when younger generations no longer spoke fluent Hindi themselves. The films remained emotionally recognizable. They still carried the rhythm of home.

Decades later, Bollywood would also become a cultural connection for many Indian Jewish families living in Israel. 

The Exchange Started Going Both Ways

What interests me even more is that the cultural exchange no longer moves in only one direction.

Indian audiences today are consuming Israeli storytelling in ways that would have been difficult to imagine twenty years ago. Shows like Fauda developed a serious following among Indian viewers through streaming platforms. Many Indians watching the series were not necessarily experts on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They watched because the storytelling felt intense, morally complicated, and emotionally human.

Good storytelling usually travels farther than politics.

I noticed something similar when Israeli actor Tsahi Halevi, known internationally for Fauda, appeared in the Bollywood film Akelli alongside Nushrratt Bharuccha. On paper, it sounds like a small entertainment headline. But culturally, it says something much larger. An Israeli actor recognized by Indian streaming audiences crossing into Hindi cinema would have sounded improbable not very long ago.

Even political leaders seem aware of how important these softer cultural exchanges can become.

During Benjamin Netanyahu’s 2018 visit to India, meetings with Bollywood figures such as Amitabh Bachchan and filmmaker Imtiaz Ali received serious attention. Some people dismissed it as symbolic public relations, but I think the symbolism mattered. Governments understand that political partnerships survive longer when ordinary people develop curiosity about one another.

Israel has also shown growing interest in attracting Bollywood productions for filming. The Hindi film Drive was partially shot in Israel with support from Israeli tourism authorities. Israeli policymakers understand something many governments overlook: cinema often shapes emotional perception more effectively than formal diplomacy ever can.

People rarely build emotional attachment through policy papers. They do it through stories, music, films, and shared cultural references.

The Relationship Still Has Distance

At the same time, I do not think the relationship has fully matured at the people-to-people level yet.

The strategic partnership between India and Israel is deep. Defense cooperation, agricultural projects, cybersecurity collaboration, intelligence sharing, water management, and technology partnerships have all expanded significantly over the past three decades.

But if I am being honest, most ordinary Indians still know very little about Israeli society beyond headlines about conflict and security. And outside Indian Jewish communities or tourism circles, many Israelis probably know India through yoga retreats, backpacking routes, or Bollywood stereotypes.

There is still distance beneath the warmth.

Yet there are moments where the distance briefly disappears.

Israeli backpackers continue arriving in places like Himachal Pradesh, Goa, Pushkar, and Kasol after military service. Indian engineers increasingly work inside Israeli technology ecosystems. Israeli agricultural specialists spend months in Indian farming communities teaching water conservation and drip irrigation techniques. Bene Israel families in Israel still cook Indian food before Shabbat dinners.

These are small interactions in the larger geopolitical picture. But relationships are usually built from smaller moments repeated over time.

Not every meaningful connection between societies happens under national flags.

What I Keep Coming Back To

Most discussions about India and Israel stay trapped inside the language of geopolitics. Defense deals. Intelligence cooperation. Trade corridors. Strategic alliances. Those things are real, and they matter.

But countries can cooperate efficiently and still remain emotionally distant from one another.

What interests me more is the quieter layer underneath the official relationship.

The grandmother in Ashdod watches old Shah Rukh Khan films because they remind her of Bombay. The teenager in Bengaluru is staying awake until 2 AM binge-watching Fauda. The Indian filmmaker is scouting locations in Jerusalem because the city carries a visual atmosphere his story needs. The Israeli traveler who arrives in India for a three-month backpacking trip and unexpectedly stays for a year.

Those moments reveal something political speeches cannot.

I think India and Israel are slowly moving beyond transactional diplomacy into something more culturally familiar. Not perfect understanding. Not ideological alignment. Just increasing comfort with one another’s presence.

And honestly, that may be more durable than grand political rhetoric.

Governments change. Elections happen. Alliances shift. Public narratives evolve. But once people become emotionally familiar with each other’s stories, the relationship tends to survive political turbulence more easily.

That is why I keep returning to the popcorn metaphor.

Sharing popcorn sounds trivial until you think about what it actually represents. You only share food casually with people you feel comfortable around. The formality disappears. Nobody is counting who took more from the bucket. Nobody is trying to impress anyone anymore.

The relationship becomes relaxed enough to feel natural.

Maybe that is where India and Israel are heading now.

Not toward some exaggerated fantasy of perfect friendship between nations. Serious countries do not operate like that. Disagreements will continue. Strategic interests will change over time.

But there is already a growing sense of familiarity between the two societies that did not exist a few decades ago. And in a world where most international relationships remain coldly transactional, that familiarity stands out.

Sometimes the strongest connections between countries begin quietly.

A film.
A song.
A traveler.
A family memory.
A shared story in a dark cinema hall.

And somewhere in the middle of it all, two people reaching into the same bucket of popcorn without thinking twice about it.

-Ankit