Social Life: Experience After Returning To India From USA

Life experience after moving back to India from USA

It has been three years since we moved back to India from USA and I wanted to pen down our social life experience after moving back which has been understandably very different from the US. There is a dash of unpredictability to everything. The conversations happen with anyone and everyone. No one plans social gatherings unlike the US (it’s a good or a bad thing depending on your personality). The experience below is our perspective – someone who moved back to Mumbai after a decade in the US (my wife and I both are from Mumbai) and live in an apartment complex with my parents. This is important because your experience may be wildly different based on which city you move to (whether you have family there or not), whether you plan to live with your parents or not and the type of housing you aspire to live in (apartment living is very different from single-family homes).

Living with family again

I moved to the US right after my bachelor’s and my wife joined me shortly after. We had built a life there together and had largely depended on each other for any kind of support. Leaving that life and coming back to live with our parents required some adjusting. We have been extremely fortunate to have amazing parents and extended family. Everyone realized that not only will we need time to adjust, but they will also need time to adjust to living with us again. 

No matter how close the families are, people get used to living without you. Just as we had our own life outside India, our parents also had their own lives which we disrupted by coming back. Of course, everyone involved was over the moon (especially our mothers!) but that does not change the fact that each of us had to make adjustments to our daily lives.

We tend to underestimate how much our parents have aged and how much we have changed when we were away for a long period. Slowly, you will rediscover your parents. You will see the pride on their faces for your achievements (however small!), the joy they feel when they know their grandkids are with them, and the general sense of security that we are physically close to them. We celebrated Diwali with them for the first time in a decade and I was instantly transported to my childhood. As they say, some things never change. You cannot put any price on the joy you get when you see them. In hindsight, this alone has been reason enough for us to call our move successful.

The extended social circle

You might think of your social circle as your family, friends and a few extended family members. You are in for a surprise! Not only is your family a part of your social life but your social life now includes your grocery guy, the watchmen and the maids. I usually hate interacting with people but India forces you to. People want to know about your lives, share stories from their lives, what their kids did in school today and how they bought a new saree today. 

Life in the US is great, people are friendly and courteous but you miss out on such connections that you build in India. You don’t realize it until it happens. It was overwhelming for me initially when we moved back but in hindsight, I did not know what I was missing out on. The social and economic boundaries disappear during conversations. Our maids get gifts for my 2-year-old daughter regularly with no expectation of anything in return. These everyday moments, these small gestures of kindness are what truly make lives worth living.

The flip side to this is that if you are a private person and don’t enjoy such randomness in life, you will find it slightly tougher to adjust back. I’m actually exactly like that but I have started to really enjoy these moments of spontaneity after moving back and now wouldn’t have it any other way.

Need for connections

Things in India have always worked on “influence”. You might remember someone getting admission through “connections” from your days in college. Do you still need connections to live well in India? Will you be able to secure admission for your kid without hefty donations? Will you be able to secure beds in a hospital in an emergency without connections? This was one of my major fears while moving back. I’m used to playing by the rules. Life in the US was perfect in that sense. Everyone gets a fair shot at everything. 

So where do things stand today? If I were to compare it to 10 years ago, there is somewhat more transparency in everything. But don’t expect people to play fair. More people means more competition and with limited resources, that leads to fewer resources per person. People will do what they need to do to get access to these resources.

Having said that, things are much better than I expected. The proliferation of technology and social media has levelled the playing field to an extent. For example, schools still accept donations but they tread carefully while doing this to not risk their reputation being tarnished on social media. Overall, it could be much better but it has turned out much better than I had originally thought. The big positive is that the introverted me has started going out of my comfort zone to make relationships and learn the Indian way of working, I would call that a big personal win!

Committing to family events

We have attended close to 10 weddings, been on 8 family trips with cousins, uncles and aunts and spent roughly one in three weekends visiting or hosting family members – all in three years of moving back. We have been more social in a year after moving back than we were in all the years in the US put together. It feels great to be a part of these gatherings again but it did require adjustments for us. 

We were used to planning our weekends the way we wanted, exploring the beautiful downtown Boston and the waterfront over the weekends without the expectation of being anywhere else. Now that we have moved back, we are expected to attend most events or host people. People usually don’t take kindly to you saying no (you might be accused of having turned into an “aloof American”). Over time, we have found a healthy balance of what we want to do and honouring family commitments though it did take us a couple of years to figure it out.

Social standing

People in India judge you based on the clothes you wear, the car you drive, the apartment you live and the schools you send your kids to. If you think deeper, isn’t that true for any society? We always love to form opinions of others and this trait is not peculiar to India. We have never been bothered about what people think of us in this sense and that has helped us immensely to cut out the noise (to be honest, there was much less noise than we expected to begin with). As people have begun working longer hours and chasing their dreams, they don’t really have time to indulge in such gossip. 

We live in a complex with 1200 apartments but have not faced any issues of neighbours being nosy or extra curious. Everyone has been really helpful and the community living experience has been amazing. In fact, people are now more open towards unconventional careers and generally speaking, there is more acceptance than before. For example, I’m currently pursuing teaching after leaving my corporate job. I was anticipating shocked reactions from family and friends but the reactions I have received have been mostly neutral to positive.

Being a private, introverted person I had a lot of apprehensions about our social life in India. I was confident about tackling other aspects of life in India and was ready for the much discussed day-to-day frustrations. But, the thing about social life is that it is as much about others as it is about you. This means you have relatively less control to change things, which scared me. So how did it turn out? Some things have been worse than I expected but most things have turned out to be much better than expected.

India has surprised me in ways I hadn’t thought of. Give it a chance, who knows you too might be in for a pleasant surprise!