Reason #8: You're Not Returning to Eden

Think you’re restoring your children to your Malgudi Days childhood? Think again.

If you’re relocating from overseas because you think you’re giving your children a chance to discover their true identity as Indians, think again.

I speak of Bangalore because I moved here, but this applies to all overseas Indians moving back to India.

Your children are American/British/whatever nationality they have been born into and raised in. Like it or not, accept it or not, that is their new identity. You pushed them into living in your time warp while you were abroad building your cushion of hard currency. But why push your children into duplicating your life and chasing your unachieved dreams?

Yet thus so many children of NRIs live, in a world of parent-approved schizophrenia, where they preserve two conflicting identities: one of compliant over-achievers yearning for the approval of their parents, and the other to be the sum of their hidden desires and find a place in the bigger world outside that they desperately want to belong to but their parents insist they should insulate themselves from.

So many returning Indians think they’ve left their families’ inner Indianness intact and unsullied by all the decay in the West they’ve fearfully cocooned themselves from. They keep their families protected in a cultural capsule, sparing no effort to carefully bring this precious little egg sac of their genes and all their savings back safer and richer to India.

Welcome home and find the same decay here. If you’re returning to a place like Bangalore that prides itself in being globalized, be prepared to run into some of the same problems you might be running from: families caught in the rat race and hard-pressed for time for each other; children getting obese on junk food; narcotic drugs (oh yes, available every where, unregulated and far more cheaper than they were abroad).

Bangalore has among the highest crime and suicide rates in India. With rapid, uncontrolled growth has come a breakdown of old ways across India, and more so in urban India. Bangalore is where old people gather at park benches and talk about all the places in the world their children and grandchildren are scattered.

You do get more time to spend with your family because you can afford to outsource domestic drudgery. But you also spend a lot of time keeping this house of cards from collapsing: supervising staff, picking up the slack when they don’t show up, and just doing many of these chores on your own because you don't want fo let your sense of independence lapse.

And yes, it is easier to prolong your children’s childhood in India, but you aren’t restoring them to the simple, bucolic era of your childhood. You cannot expel Kentucky Fried Chicken and Facebook from their lives. Drugs are cheaper than in New York, and easy to buy.Rapid urbanization has made city life more impersonal. Our elders kept up with their distant cousins despite a decrepit postal and phone system. Now, in the era of mobile phones and social networking, those elaborate family networks have shriveled because no one has time.

Reason #4: The Worst of Both Worlds

You think you’re going to get the best of both worlds for your family, but could end up with the worst of both.

You’re familiar with this math: If I’m earning in dollars and spending in rupees, I couldn’t get any closer to winning a lottery. With servants to do my work, and saving pots of money because everything is dirt cheap, I’m going to live royally.

Isn’t that the ultimate heaven for a middle class Indian, or for anyone on an expat pay package?

It’s a better life than one could imagine when immigrating to London, New York or Sydney. But remember, too, that getting through your average day will sap every ounce of energy and patience you have and cost you dearly. You can’t always count on the government for power supply or water, so be prepared to arrange for your own power back-up, and patronize a water tanker that can drain the city’s depleted borewells even drier.

Getting someone to cook and clean for you and drive you around is wonderful. You could also end up with higher levels of stress because you’ve suddenly become parent, psychiatrist, moneylender and health care provider for your household help. Altering your life to this degree to just get someone to cook meals and dust your house for you? Suddenly this doesn’t seem very attractive.

Also consider that you will spend a great part of your day working with people who don’t deliver on what they’ve promised to, and chasing people who routinely don’t show up when they’re supposed to.

If you’re at a point in your life where you’ve achieved independence, self-sufficiency and equanimity, do you really want to sacrifice these?

Top Ten Reasons Not to Move to Bangalore

Packing up your family and moving to Bangalore because this is Silicon Valley with the same salubrious weather and a lower cost of living? Whatever your company’s HR propagandist or your relocation agent tells you, brace yourself for unpleasant surprises.

This city has a king-size ego, and not much to offer in terms of work, family life or lifestyle. So think twice about altering your life plans to accommodate this city.

The enduring lesson I’ve learnt: You’ll have to sacrifice a lot to accommodate this city, but it won’t do much to accommodate you – not because it doesn’t want to, but because it is itself in tatters.

Here’s my honest and opinionated assessment of Bangalore that will help you factor in all the real pros and cons of moving to this city.

Next post:
Reason #1: The Housing is Ridiculously Overpriced.

The Parents' Guide to India's Education System

Copyrighted. Reprints only with attribution and the author’s permission


This blog offers the Only guide to education in India that is comprehensive, honest and useful. Most so-called guides are larded with PR bullshit. Take it from a parent and a former newspaper reporter who has scoured every option and is happy to share her findings with thousands of others who are likely to walk in the same shoes.

Families moving to India find themselves staring at an alphabet soup of educational systems: CBSE, ICSE, SSC, SSLC, NCERT, IGCSE, ISC .... The nightmare doesn’t end, and parents have to make the right choice in a snap.

Time is short. The education system is completely different from what your children are used to. The school year is different. The Indian school calendar runs from June to March so you agonize about whether it’s better to let your children finish their school year abroad so they experience closure before you all move, or better for them to cut short their school year, forgo their summer holidays and plunge into a fresh start in India. School admission can be a humiliating ordeal for parents and children. Schools typically have long waiting lists and grueling admission tests that can batter a child’s self-confidence. Your children are likely to be saddled with heavier school bags, loaded with homework, parrot their textbooks and constantly prepare for tests.

You stare at all these unappetizing options and have to take the perfect decision quickly ... because your child’s future depends on the oracle of a school principal and your ability to find the right school and curriculum.

Unscrambling the acronyms is easy. The challenge lies in finding the right school that can give your child an enriched and balanced learning experience that you want for them and would make your relocation worthwhile.

Those relocating for a brief period want to leapfrog into a compatible educational ecosystem. Those moving to India for good want to make that perfect, unerring decision that could make or break their family's adjustment to India.

Parents want to choose a school and an education system that together are most likely to make their kids happy, successful and well-prepared for admission to the most competitive colleges in India and abroad.

Read my succeeding posts for answers to the most asked questions about the Indian school system.

The next installment will answer:
What is CBSE?
What is ICSE?
Which is better: CBSE or ICSE?