Reflection - Life post moving to India

Few months ago, we relocated to India after about a decade in US. With elementary school and middle school kids, it was a big decision, and I shared some thoughts here - Moving to India after a decade in USA - Thought process | LinkedIn. This article led to lot of discussions with many folks who were in similar state of mind. Some of them requested to share a reflection of life in India.

Physical proximity matters

Moving to India clearly enabled us to spend more time with family and extended social circle. Within first week of landing here my brother and his family flew in for a surprise, we celebrated my dad's birthday as a full family. We attended an awesome music concert and kids started bonding with their cousins. Close friend of mine came over on my birthday as a surprise. A long weekend was enough to plan a trip to hometown and got to meet extended family. We also covered one of four pilgrimage sites for Hindu religion. My grandmother for the first time ever, came and stayed with us for 3 weeks. We are now getting together again for Diwali and have another 30 people get together planned for December. Lot of this was pretty difficult to do while living in US.

About the kids' happiness metric

Getting kids to start their school was one of the biggest unknowns. While we had school admissions done while we were in US, there were still a bunch of unknowns about the school and the education culture in India. We opted for Cambridge curriculum to make it easier for kids to adjust. Both kids fortunately adjusted well, and their teachers were pretty supportive. Schooling in India certainly felt more rigorous with my 7th grader spending relatively more time doing homework than what he did in USA. Kids learning and catching up on Hindi was another big challenge that we anticipated though it was great to see them actually enjoy learning Hindi. On the road, we would play game of reading the shop names and before sleeping, we will ask each other Hindi translation/synonyms.

Coming from product management domain, I actually set up a metric for kids' happiness as well. I asked them to rate their happiness in context of moving from USA to India on a scale of 0 (neutral about moving to India) to 10 (really unhappy and mad about moving). While in US, they started at around 8 (extremally unhappy). After few weeks of living in India and bonding with some new friends, they came down to 2-3. Finally, after moving into our apartment which offered them more friends, amenities (swimming pool, badminton courts etc.), they are now operating between 0 and 1. I also expanded scale from -10 where negative scale meant they are actually happier in India. So far best score I got was 0.001 which I am pretty happy with :).

Life in India - more expensive, more comfortable

India certainly has become expensive - for me, most of the things appear 3X expensive compared to 9 years ago. With UPI, payment is extremely streamlined where an extremely tiny roadside vendor will also certainly have a UPI QR scan code for you to pay digitally. School fees continue to climb steeply and along with rent, make up for top expense. Hyderabad offers a rich set of US brands almost at US prices - for instance you can enjoy crispy creme donut for Rs120 each (used to be $1.5 in US), same goes for Starbucks. As a relief, some of the online streaming subscriptions are certainly cheaper. For instance, YouTube premium costs Rs189.00/month for family vs I was paying $11.99 for an account in US.

However, if you are willing to pay the price, life can certainly be more comfortable on multiple dimensions. Being a vegetarian, we are enjoying the large number of food options and comfort of getting them delivered (check the office cafeteria lunch below). Even at midnight there are more than 10 different places ready to deliver food and desserts. Organic food is available you will get lot of brands here. Even if you forgot something at home, there are service providers who will go pick things that you want from where you want to where you want - all at affordable price. Cities like Hyderabad has seen communities/apartments come up which offer everything you need ranging from grocery store, club house with multiple amenities, salon, spa, play area, social event celebrations, list goes on. Just received 45 pieces of clothes ironed for Rs 315 (~$4). I certainly am not missing doing dishes, folding laundry, vacuuming etc. as all that is outsourced here. Lastly moving with Microsoft is one of the most comfortable ways for you to relocate given the great relocation benefits Microsoft offers.

Challenges

To balance it, there certainly are challenges here as well. Navigating through process of getting a driving license and undergoing process at licensing office was pretty overwhelming (check image below of the office, there was no clarity on what needs to be done where). Traffic on weekend evenings and office peak time can be an absolute nightmare. While Hyderabad has certainly evolved tremendously (lot more high rises, lush communities), road conditions and driving patterns are really pathetic. Given the revenue city generates from IT industry, I was pretty disappointed by the horrible road conditions and low level of cleanliness. You will see reflection of high population density wherever you go.

Overall, I think what I shared previously still holds true. Moving to India has a lot of benefits and challenges. Having a strong clarity in your head about the India move will help you navigate through the challenges and enjoy the benefits. Well, that's all for this time.