R2i: A year of living India-genously
Update: Thank you for the lovely response to this article. I am very excited and proud to announce the release of my 2nd book, ‘r2i: Return to India’.
The book is a chronicle of my r2i experiences and I hope it interests you, entertains you and touches you in ways that my second innings in India has.
Please find the book at the following locations:
Kindle (worldwide): https://amzn.to/2P75lU9
Print (US and RoW): https://amzn.to/2P75lU9
Print (India) : https://pothi.com/pothi/book/parth-pandya-r2i-return-india
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It was on a gentle summer night in May 2016 that I took a one way ticket from Seattle to Bangalore (Bengaluru) with my family. Two of my long standing wishes came true that night (a) someone with a placard bearing my name stood waiting for me (b) I r2i-ed. (returned to India)
Having literally written the book on it (shameless plug for r2idreams: for here or to go?), the return to India was an anticipated adventure. After mulling and tossing and turning and weighing the pros and cons, I took the leap of faith and came back to India after sixteen years.
The last months before leaving the US were spent in saying long goodbyes. To the house where my kids were born, to friends who had grown to be family, to a city that had sheltered me and taken me in.
I was however at that juncture in life where the threat of the “what-if” question was looming large. Having nurtured the desire to experience life in India for myself, for being close to my parents, for giving my children a flavor of their roots, the window was narrowing. The longer you stay, the more entrenched you get in the life that you build. And so, I took the leap of faith and landed in the place they call the Silicon Valley of India.
As I write this, the first year of r2i is drawing to an end. Like an arranged marriage, this year has been full of thrills, chills and the act of understanding each other. The end of the first year is my new normal and I can say I understand this new life a little better now.
Even though I came back to my home town of Mumbai with alarming regularity during my stay in the US, taking the “non” out of the NRI opens a door to a different portal. To add to that, Bangalore was an unknown entity to me. I realized very soon that my experience in India would be directly influenced by geography. Where I lived relative to my work, relative to my children’s school, relative to the places where life outside work exists, dictated the satisfaction I could derive from it.
We found a sweet spot that worked for my work place (13 kilometers away), my wife’s and the school for my kids. To make the distance tractable, I found my solution in an early start to work each day. I started using my travel time in my office cab to read, write, sleep, watch videos and converse. I don’t enjoy driving in India and I thank my lucky stars each day that I don’t have to drive to work.
I found India stimulating and challenging and as an observer and a story-teller, it is one of the best gifts I could ask for. The first few months of living in India threw up saga after saga. I broke my finger playing cricket and was helped by a good Samaritan, the kids got stuck for four hours in rain in a bus ride home on their second day of school, my office cab driver got into an argument with an IAS officer and the entire cab, including passengers were hauled away to the officer’s home so he could give him a dressing down. I wanted to create memories and India wasn’t disappointing me.
The much touted struggles of living in India wholly depend on your setup. Roti, kapda, makaan (food, clothes, housing) and the internet are fairly easy to establish. While there were the predictable bureaucratic issues in both private and public sector, once things were established, they went smoothly. No power outages, no water shortage. We were up and running in our rented apartment with minimal fuss. Bangalore’s lakes might catch fire once in a while but being several hundred feet above the sea level helps it maintain its cool.
When I was living in the beautiful city of Seattle, my residence was a single home in a community where you couldn’t simply ask your children to go to their friend’s house and play. I was very clear that when I lived in India, the kids should get the “building” experience that I had growing up. Having moved into a community of about 1200 apartments, I was confident that natural selection would kick in and the children would find friends they could get along with among the many on offer. True to form, they did. Now I am faced with the challenge that my parents had while I was growing up — trying to make sure the children get home for dinner.
We were a nuclear family in Seattle. We are a nuclear family in Bangalore. Our parents, while available to come stay with us more readily, live their own lives in Mumbai. That means that the struggle that we as two working parents faced continued without change after the move.
In Seattle, one of us would drop the kids and the other would pick them up. Distances, flexibility and time were on our side and we soldiered along managing our lives. A setup like that is much more difficult in India. That’s where the most tenuous part of the arrangement came in. We had to depend on external help.
We have help at home with the cooking and cleaning and with managing the children before we get home. That was a tremendous adjustment that all of us had to make. People mistake the affordability of labor with it reliability and I have realized that you do need to get lucky with the people you get.
Almost everyone had universally told us that children adjust quickest to any change. They were unequivocally correct. My two boys were 7 and 4 when we moved from the only place they had ever lived in. They were weaned away from their comfort zone to a country they only visited during vacations. And yet, both of them were brave soldiers, starting school within two weeks of landing and finding their way around the confusing maze of a different culture and different surroundings.
Our attempts to religiously get admissions to the more traditional schools are a story unto themselves. Some refused to give us the form unless we appeared in person. Others demonstrated outright sexist attitudes on the phone. Idealism gave way to realism and the children were admitted in an international school and it has been a good move.
The experience of going in a school bus, being part of a large school, playing a sport each day and learning to speak in Hindi (with a smattering of Kannada) has been enriching. They have perfected the Indian head shake, talk in a delectable Indian slang, relish the food on offer and have begun observing and absorbing the circumstances around them.
I knew coming in that work is a very large portion of what could make r2i work or fail. My company is a software giant headquartered in the US and I do often work with folks there. As a traditional morning person, it took me months to get used to staying awake and being productive in night calls. I have found my work life balance tilting away from where it was when I was in the US. Work has been interesting though and occupies more of the day than it used to. The jury on the effect of this change is still out.
Culturally, the atmosphere at work is a lot more casual and a lot more personal. The boundaries between relationships with your co-workers are much more fluid, so is the humor and the political incorrectness. The lunches are long and the morale events are a lot of fun. Working here have required me to ‘lighten up’ in a way. India being a young country shows in its workforce and it also shows at times in people’s attitude towards work and the maturity that comes with it.
When I was in the US, my vacations were used up traveling to India. When I relocated to India, I took the opportunity to go places I normally wouldn’t have the chance to visit on my India trips. Coorg, Chikmagalur, Bheemeshwari, Sri Lanka — the list is growing. Watching cricket matches in stadiums, listening to music concerts, eating chaat on the road, devouring mangoes in summer have all been great to experience, not to mention the festivals that we could now celebrate with family. And what can I say of the food other than the fact that it has helped me grow as a person. Literally.
A friend had sent me a cost benefit analysis of the financial implications of moving back to India and concluded it made no sense to him and was asking me what the opportunity cost lost was. I can now answer that with certainty. As a single child of aging parents, the opportunity to be here and see them often and just “be” for them is priceless. The time spent by grandparents with the kids in an environment of their comfort is invaluable. Getting to answer the “what-if” question for yourself is satisfying.
“Are you here to stay for good?”, I get asked. And to them, my answer is that I don’t know. I believe that a change this big deserves some period to bake. I may have left the US but it does not mean I don’t miss it. It has faded as the year has progressed, but it is never past the horizon.
Sometimes, you just take a leap of faith and see where it takes you. The flight of the first year has been rewarding. I eagerly look forward to seeing where the wind will blow next. The sails are ready.
