Overall feeling after 4 months of R2I ...

After 4 months of stay here, time to sum up the overall feeling. I should say it has been a mixed bag. We know there are some things which won't change in our life time here in India and we have to get used to - like general cleanliness of the surrondings in India(people keep their homes neat, I doubt we would see any home that packed with things like some of the homes in US but as soon as they get out to street, that mentality changes in the opposite direction!), random traffic, drivers not respecting the pedestrians, clean water supply, minimal pollution etc.

However, there are lots of positive things as well - it is a joy to see the kids playing with their cousins and getting pampered from their grandparents. They are not just kids - they are related to somebody and try to understand the links (questions like how am I related to so and so we met is a common question from our first one). Also, being born here, it always feels like your own place - you don't feel you are outsider and that makes your heart lighter. At work, there is not much pressure of getting laid off the next day. You feel like you are working with your own people - of course, there is always the company politics etc which wouldn't go off that easily but that is something to be taken as part of life ...


Appreciate your feedback and comments, please leave a comment if you found this post useful (or not!) ...

Concerns ...

Warn you in-advance, this post is going to be a large laundry list :-)

Who doesn't have concerns with a change? Especially true when you are moving away from one of the world's advanced countries to a developing nation, which you don't expect to see becoming a developed nation in your life time? Following were some of the concerns I had in my mind, without getting some good answers.

Water: Will water be available for most time of the day, even if it is not 24 hours? Water was a big issue few years ago and our question was - has it changed? The last thing we want to do is stand in-line for a water tanker or in-front of a water tap with a bucket!

Pollution: When we visited India, we could see tree-lined street turning blue by evening with smoke. With the heat, most of the doors and windows are kept open which lets in the smoke as well. Specially true, if you are living next to a main street. However, we did see many pockets of Bangalore where you would see fresh air and not much vehcles either. It was clear that location will matter most but the question was - would we have a choice, given the work locations and school location of the kids.

Electricity, internet connection etc: Is the situation same as before where electricity goes off for couple of hours a day? We knew we could have a back-up power supply in-case we need to manage. So, this wasn't a big concern but question of disruption when working from home was still there. Whereas in US, working from home or being at work didn't make much difference in-terms of connectivity.

Long term where India will be?: This is a question for which 'time will tell' is the answer. You do see lot of coverage about growth in India, companies moving offices, expanding in India etc. However, you also know that the political system in India and the corruption etc, which will pull down any progress.

Family interactions: This is a good thing when compared with the stay in US, where you are pretty much isolated. However, can this be a 'too much of a good thing'? I have seen relatives in family circle, who ended up having visiting guests every other day and they expect to be treated as a 'guest'. Can this happen to us? Getting bombarded with relatives when both in the family are working can be a challenge in itself...
       
Kids school adjustment: We had heard lot about international schools in India. Compared to how we studied when we were in India, it was clear that kids from US won't survive that system. The environment would be so culturally different that kids won't find the matching bandwidth to study along with other kids. Hence, our choice was clear - it will have to be international school, at least for few years. However, question on quality of teachers, behavior of other kids in school still remained a question.

I will post down the line how each of these concerns got addressed or have remained still as concerns... (having been in Bangalore for 3 months now after the move as of this post...)

Appreciate your feedback and comments, please leave a comment if you found this post useful (or not!) ...