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.
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!) ...
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