Humans of Olympics: Teaching friends about India's culture through the Olympics

Aishwarya Karunakar, 28, is a sustainability and social innovation specialist.

A targeted online advertisement on Instagram informed Aishwarya Karunakar, a 28-year-old engineer who specialises in sustainability and social innovation, about the first-ever India House at the Paris Olympics. Karunakar, a Paris resident since 2022, saw a video of Reliance Foundation founder, Nita Ambani, talking about India House at the Olympics a week before the Summer Games were to kick off.

Aishwarya Karunakar's curiosity led her to the Games village (Shrenik Avlani)

She got curious as she didn’t know anything about Olympic Houses, which is a fast growing Olympics trend. She quickly logged on to the official India House website, bought tickets and despite the rain and queues came on the inaugural day with some of her European friends.

“Most of my non-Indian friends know very little about our culture and country other than curry and Bollywood. They have a lot of misconceptions too. I wanted to show them that we are so much more than how they view India and our culture and I also wanted to clear some of their misconceptions, so I dragged them to the India House. But because of the long wait in the rain they ran away to the nearest bar,” said Karunakar, adding, “I hope they come back and I can teach them something new about our culture.”