From New York to the Pink City: why I moved back to India after 9 years, and how it's gone
I spent about 9 years in the US. Good career in tech, comfortable life. In 2022 my wife, our daughter and I moved back for good, not to Bangalore or Gurgaon, but to my hometown, Jaipur.
The "why" is what I still get asked the most, so here is the honest version:
- However integrated we got, we never fully shook the feeling of being a foreigner. I missed the plain familiarity of home.
- We are food people. We loved exploring every cuisine out there, but our hearts kept going back to the actual Indian food we grew up on.
- We wanted our daughter to grow up inside our culture and roots, not visiting them once a year, while still being free to go explore the world later if she wants.
- The pandemic made the distance from family unbearable. Watching parents age from the other side of the planet, and losing a few people we loved, made the decision for us.
- And honestly, we wanted to spare our kid the low-grade cultural confusion you often see in children raised far from their roots.
A few years in now, the verdict holds. It has not been frictionless. Some conveniences from the US just do not exist here. But every place has its trade-offs and we chose ours with eyes open.
The mental model that got us over the line was regret minimisation: picture yourself at 80 and ask which choice you would regret more. We did not want to spend life wondering "what if we had gone back."
If you are at that crossroads: weigh it honestly, get clear on your priorities, and do not let fear be the deciding vote.
For those who moved back, or are thinking about it, what actually tipped the decision for you, and what caught you off guard?