Driving on a busy Kalvarijų street in Vilnius, one can easily miss an unassuming Indian shop if not for an unusual-looking man often lingering outside it. This is Harbhajan Singh Bagga, the owner of the store, who has been living in Lithuania for ten years and says he does not imagine spending his retirement anywhere else.
For many years, Bagga lived in Germany, where he was working in civil aviation. According to the Indian man, he was always interested in the Baltic states and other Eastern European countries but was unable to visit them while they were still part of the Soviet Union.
“So, I had the urge to visit Eastern Europe,” he says.
After retiring in 2010, Bagga returned to India. In 2012, his dream to visit Lithuania finally came true.
“When I first came, I saw the difference between the Western and Eastern European countries. I really liked it here,” the man explains.
Asked what appealed to him in Lithuania, he recalls feeling that it was a peaceful country. With work, Bagga visited over 90 countries around the world. He experienced living in Malaysia, Argentina, and other countries but says that nowhere else did he feel as safe as in Lithuania.
“In ten years of my time living in Lithuania, I’ve never seen a fight here. Even in the clubs and bars that are very crowded, people are peaceful and friendly,” the man says.
And in other countries? “Disturb, disturb, and disturb,” Bagga describes the feeling.
In Germany, he says, he saw fights every day. “There is a lot of crime, fighting, and racism because there are a lot of foreigners from Turkey, Pakistan, Syria, India, Bangladesh…”
Bagga stresses that the most important thing for him is to have a peaceful life, and he has it in Lithuania.
“Nobody has ever discriminated against me here, even though I’m a foreigner, I’m an Indian, I wear a turban. I’ve never experienced any kind of racism in Lithuania,” he says.
“There is peace, there is easy and safe life in Lithuania. This is one of the biggest attractions for me to live here. I have no plan to live anywhere else, and I pray to God that I die on this land,” Bagga adds.
The Indian man agrees that most Lithuanians do not share his positivity about their country. According to him, this is because most of them have not travelled as widely as he did.
“There are a lot of opportunities for young people to start their life here. They don’t need to go to other countries because there is a shortage of educated people in Lithuania. At present, more than 1,000 Indian people work in IT professions in Lithuania,” Bagga notes.
The man is frank – even the Russian aggression in Ukraine did not make him feel any more unsafe in Lithuania.
“Russia cannot start a war with any NATO country, and you should feel proud that Lithuania is part of NATO,” he says.
Growing business
Bagga runs a small Indian shop on Kalvarijų Street in Vilnius. He started his business in 2013. At the time, no more than a few dozen Indian people were living in Lithuania, so he opened the shop “with the Lithuanian people in mind”, he says.
“Lithuanians were very interested in these products that I’m selling now. It was not available in Lithuania, so I had an idea and started selling those products that people could not buy elsewhere,” Bagga explains.
He says he was the first one to open an Indian shop in Lithuania and introduce products, such as Indian tea and spices, to the market. To this day, around 85 percent of Bagga’s customers are Lithuanians, according to the businessman.
But the Indian man’s business journey in Lithuania was not without bumps. His first shop was just across the street from the current one. It was five times bigger and employed several people, Bagga says. However, the shop was destroyed in a fire in 2020.
Then, the coronavirus pandemic started. But when life came back to normal, Bagga started his business again from zero. Although his shop is now much smaller than it used to be, the man is positive – after running it alone for a long time, he hired the first employee in December last year and hopes that the business will continue to grow successfully.
Bagga stresses that his faith is what helps him to stay so upbeat: “I trust my God, and he looks after me nicely. Everything that happens to me is my fate, and I accept it.”
Friends and food
Bagga has three children who live in the UK, the US, and Canada. In 2019, after the death of his first wife, he met a Lithuanian woman, and the couple is now married.
Asked whether he gets along with other Lithuanians, the man beams: “You won’t believe, I have more than 10,000 friends on Facebook.”
In his words, “Lithuanians are a little reserved but very honest people, and when I’m nice to them, they are nice to me”.
Every Sunday, Bagga also holds free meetings in Vilnius where he teaches meditation and shares Indian food. Through these activities as well as his shop, his circle of connections is slowly growing, he says.
The man counts that there are also around 5,000 Indian people living in Lithuania at the moment, and he is an active member of their community.
“From time to time, we gather and celebrate Diwali, the Independence Day of India, the Republican Day of India. [...] They treat me as a local guardian because I’m older than everybody,” he says.
Bagga is 73 years old. According to him, the secret of his youthful looks and spirit lies in his diet and lifestyle.
“I’m vegetarian by birth. I’ve never eaten any kind of fish or meat. I have also never drunk alcohol in my life. That’s why my health is so good – I’ve never been sick, never had a fever in my life,” the man says.
Bagga is Sikh, and vegetarianism is the fundamental rule of Sikhism, the fifth-largest religion in the world. “God has given us a lot of things to eat, and meat is not a diet of a human being,” he explains.
This is also why Bagga is not too fond of Lithuanian food: “I like šaltibarščiai without egg and cepelinai without meat.”
Bagga was born in the Punjab state of India. He left home in 1968 when he went to Germany to study. Asked if he ever feels homesick, the man answers with a simple “no”.
“I feel that I’m a son of God, and God made a very big home for us – this earth planet. For me, there is no difference where to live. Much more important is that there is peace where you live, and I feel at peace in Lithuania,” he explains.
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