Moving Back to India

I was recently asked why people move back to India.  A person I recently became friends with asked me this question.  I gave her my answer – that, in my opinion, it really depends on what age the person left India.

This question also made me rethink about my own reasons for coming to India.  I moved back last August after thinking about doing it (seriously doing it) since the beginning of the millenium and once-in-a-blue-moon thinking since my father passed away in the early 1990s.  In other words, I had been considering it for a long time.  Now I can’t believe it’s been over a year that I’ve been permanently here.

Here were my reasons for moving back to India:

a) I felt a real void.  There was a desire to understand my roots and my culture.  The strength of that desire came from painful experiences of not understanding older family members and the damage that caused in my life.  This was mostly a specific aunt but it mushroomed into other folks as well.  Why do they think the way they do?  Why are they act towards me in not-so-great ways like they do?  Why do I think differently than them?  Am I wrong about the way I think and feel about what is “right”?

b) I hadn’t lived with my family in 15 years.  My brother and I lived together for a few years but in this case I am really talking about parents, i.e., my mom.  There was a void there as well, a desire to know my own family better.  It had become clear that we didn’t know each other as well as many other families.

c) I was getting tired of my “American” friends who had “American” style of thinking.  I couldn’t fit in with them completely.  I was too Indian for them or, to put it in another way, they were too “American” for me.  This was true not in our values as much in our day-to-day way of handling things, not in our high-level vision of life but in our tactical vision of life.  It also had to do with finding real friendships, people to connect with.  I wasn’t finding it.

d) After being very determined and purposeful with goals, life happened.  The result was over a decade of chaos.  It was also a result of giving up my purpose.  My cheese had been moved.  My determination had been shot very specifically by family members reminding me why I was working so hard, that I should stop working to build a career.  Hearing this was bad timing because my self-resolve and self-esteem had died due to the years of criticism I was receiving.  I just bought into it and gave up at least partially.

e) I got some of my determination, some of myself, back but not enough.  What I did get back led me to my final reason – the opportunities available in India seemed immense.  If other things in my life in the US were not making me feel good about myself and I wasn’t fitting in there, then why not try to move to India now that the economic reasons were less of a constraint?

Has my return been positive?  Largely I think it’s been good.  I have filled and continue to fill the void of understanding my culture, family and myself.  I have also seen the bad side of India.  Behavioral differences (again, the tactical way of dealing with life, not the high-level) is very different than what I am used to.  There are things I can do to improve a few areas of my life but there are other things that just are the way they are and I have to learn to deal with them better.

I have also realized, and mostly accepted, that I am just too damn screwed up – I don’t fit in either country completely!  It’s sad yet funny at the same time.  Not to jump into another post but this is not just identity crisis, it’s more than that.  It has to do with me as a person – my values, my beliefs, my personality, my attitudes, my looks, the way I’m perceived, and all kinds of other things.  It has been a humble realization that someone else with the same exact external influences and affects as me may have had very different experiences.