Now that we have decided to move back, I have been thinking hard, really hard about what could have been done differently, what could have changed our experience, and in general, how I can help anybody else in our place.

So here are some tips, tricks, suggestions and gotchas. If you are reading this and have any additional points to add, please let me know and I will gladly update the list.

• First and foremost, find a place to live close to the person you are closest to in that city. If not in the same complex, find something that is less than 15-20 minutes of drive time. Ideally, walking distance. You may not pop into their home all the time, but it sure is a huge help when you need to find the nearest/best hair cutting place or a reliable plumber or grocery stores to avoid, etc.
• Be ready to become dependent. I am not talking about losing independence because you may have to move in with parents or in-laws. I am talking about being dependent on domestic help of various kinds - full-time/part-time servant, driver, the guy who presses your clothes, grocery delivery, etc. All these service persons are available, for relatively low cost too (esp for "IT" salaries), but most of these tasks are not doable without them. Usually there is no dishwasher, so if the maid does not come, you end up having to wash each thing by yourself. It is very dusty, so there is no way you can go more than a day or two without dusting the whole place. Driving is extremely stressful, so you do need a driver for most of the day. And so on. So be ready to give up your independence (in that way).
• Even though cities like Bangalore are "built for the expat" as in they have communities catering to expats, services built to address expat needs, etc., I would strongly urge you not to live life in India as an American (or any other country person). You decide to move to India, live like an Indian. You will get extremely frustrated if you live life like an American. Don't get fooled by the setup. Underneath, it is all Indian, no matter what the façade looks like.
• Related to the above point, don't try to live in a bubble too much. Don't protect yourself by living in air conditioning, drinking only bottled water, etc. After the initial few weeks of transitioning, just let go. Roll down the windows and take in some of the diesel smoke. Have normal "RO" water at good restaurants. Let the kids into the community swimming pool. The sooner you blur the line between "there" and "here", the better. Of course, you need to use discretion like eating at roadside stalls but not drinking their water, but in general, live outside the bubble.
• If you have a choice between an extremely large complex with plenty of amenities and a small complex with basic amenities, choose the  latter. I know it may seem counter-intuitive because if you live in a big complex, the chances you will make more friends are higher. However, what we noticed was, the bigger the complex, the easier it is to not meet the same people more than once or twice, ever. If you are in a smaller complex, I feel there would be a better chance of actually getting to know the neighbors.
• Service providers are not responsible. Just keep that in mind. They have no sense of ownership, no attention to detail, and most importantly, no sense of responsibility. A plumber may say he is coming at 10am but won't show up all day and will never even call you that he cannot make it, and worse, won't apologize for either of those issues. Just know that the biggest issues will arise when you set up various services. Typically you won't need to interact with these guys on a day-to-day basis. However, as I experienced, it is extremely frustrating when pretty much every single service provider repeats the same crime - being late or not showing up, doing an incomplete job, providing incorrect updates or instructions and in general doing what would be considered an unsatisfactory job. Just be ready for it.
• Give up your politeness. When dealing with any service provider including servants, drivers, waiters, parking garage attendants, watchmen, etc., don't be afraid to be what you may consider borderline rude. Being bossy is always better than being polite. If you notice that the other person is someone who can handle politeness, you can turn down the volume on the bossiness. The general rule of thumb is if you don't indicate that you are running the show, they will. And you don't ever want that to happen. I must admit, this was one of my biggest challenges. I simply could not behave like that.
• Some logistics - get proof of residence established early. Address verification is a big deal and if you don't have a local address it would be hard or impossible to get any service started. Keep 100s of passport-sized photos of  the entire family ready. Well, not 100s, but dozens at least. You need them everywhere, just like the proof of residence. Make sure you have an ID proof that shows residence too. California driver's license did not fly in some cases for me, because it did not have proof that I am an Indian. :-( Finally, make many photocopies of these various proofs.
• Save yourself the trouble and get an automatic shift car. I know there are advantages in a manual shift, biggest being a cost advantage, but my left leg is screaming for rest after maybe 10 minutes of driving in a stop-and-go situation. Which happens all the time. An automatic shift car will give you the much needed relief when driving around in traffic.

I realize that this may be something every person who returns to India may write, but I didn’t want that to stop my contribution. Hope this helps :-)

After about 3 months of being in India, and about a month-and-a-half of being in our “own place”, that’s the thought that came to mind on the drive to the office this morning. I am uncomfortable. The wife is uncomfortable. The kids are not directly uncomfortable but they have changed and are probably showing their disconnect by their changing (for the worse) behavior.

Fish out of water? Not quite, but fairly close. I was in the US for 16 years, and my wife for 12. The kids have only seen the US life and lifestyle. Neither my wife nor I have set up a family in India. I left India when I was still kinda under the security blanket of my parents.

It is not the traffic. It is not the lack of true, good friends. It is not the lack of discipline. It is not the lack of ownership. It is not the fact that despite being close to most of my team here in India, most of the management is still in the US so I am always “behind” on email because I have to react to management emails.

I think, for me, it is a little bit of everything above, and maybe some more. I feel uncomfortable. I don’t feel “at home” when I come home.

Can’t tell if this is something that I can get over, or not. At this point odds are very small that I can get over. Especially considering that everyone else in the family is going through the same, and maybe in the wife’s case, even worse state of being disconnected.

The road was expected to be bumpy, but as it turns out, the bumps may be too many for us.

As you may have read, we are planning to relocate to Bangalore very soon. One of the first things we have to do is get admission into a good school for both our kids. Since it is highly competitive there, and since the school year has already started, I wanted to get a head start and do some research and maybe even contact some schools to get the conversation started.

To my unpleasant surprise, search results for schools in Bangalore are full of SEO spam. I mean, the results are from a few popular (by visits?) domains but the content is just not there. It is truly pathetic. Content is scraped from one site to the other, so reviews are also copies of each other. Of course, reviews for the same school range from “I am pulling out my kid” to “This school rocks”, so I have learnt to take them with a massive pinch of salt (aka disregard them).

Not only is the content bad, the layout of these sites is also bad. These sites are built for pageviews and so, there are ads galore. I am always looking at how to avoid clicking on ads.

Finally, the schools themselves seem to have bad design taste in building their own website. Considering how much money they make on tuition and other costs, I would think they have to invest in getting their site updated with a more modern look. Most of them still have scrolling lists and Flash and many of them still don’t supply relevant information (like tuition fees!) thereby making the visit to the site futile.

Earlier this year, after about 2 years of thinking about it and not acting upon it, we decided to relocate to India. I have been in the US since 1996, and my wife has been since 2000. So for both of us, it has been a long time and we are quite settled here, so this is going to be a tremendous mental move on top of an already big geographical/physical move.

If all goes well, I will be able to move within my company, which has a big R&D center in Bangalore. That would be ideal, because I already work with folks there. It would be ideal if I can avoid the work place “settling down” while we settle down in our personal lives.

We have told the kids (4 and 6) about this and they seem to be excited but I suppose they have no idea what is coming up. Of course, by now they have also formed some close friendships with some of our friends' kids and in their school, but I am assuming for them it won’t be as hard a move as it seems for us.

Excited. Apprehensive. Anxious.

So, why did we decide to move away from what is clearly a thriving Silicon Valley?

The parents

My parents and my wife’s parents are all getting old very fast. From just a few years ago when they visited us and now, we can see they have physically slowed down and that is only going to get worse. We’d like to be closer to them so they have someone to support them if and when needed. They are still able, but as months and years go by, they won’t be.

The kids

We are currently sending both our kids to private school and it is freaking expensive. The second income in the household ha become a must, rather than a nice-to-have. It is either that, or we move to a place where public schools are excellent. The issue there is that we have to shell out more for the real estate and those areas a total sellers' market, making it hard to get a bargain.

Having gone to school in India, and hearing about the newer schools and newer forms of education, it seems clear that the quality of education in India is high, especially primary and secondary school. Despite the tuition being much higher than what we paid decades ago, it is still very, very affordable compared to the Bay Area. The second income is most certainly a nice-to-have rather than a must-have.

The Indian economy

India’s economy has been growing and many reports suggest that it is only the beginning. Bangalore felt like Silicon Valley from the late 90s when I visited last year - many startups with great ideas, many angels willing to invest, venture capital getting organized, etc. Of course, there are also the big multinationals with varying levels of presence there, so in general, the tech scene is booming. Inflation is a worry and so is the weak Rupee, but there is real growth (i.e. revenues and profits), so there is reason to be optimistic about the next 10 years.

Every rose has its thorn

The reason we could not finalize for so long is we kept thinking of the downsides, and there are many. At our age, it is hard to make new friends and we have a bunch of friends now with whom we regularly hang out. We will miss having close friends there. Corruption is rampant and poverty is unavoidable. Pollution and population growth/density creates a disease-spreading melting pot in and around the big cities.

On a macro level, politicians are a joke and because of the Parliamentary form of democracy practised in India, and the fragmentation of the big, national parties into smaller, regional parties invariably creates coaltition governments and as a result very little gets done.

Making the leap

All these factors were making us wary of taking the big step. For now, the benefits have overtaken the possible downsides and with certain assumptions made, we are going to try to make it work there. Not everything will be easy, not everything will be straight-forward, but we could actually benefit big time in the long run.

So here we are, about a month away from starting the next chapter of our lives. We are excited and cannot wait to get it started!