(Part-2) Family | Life In India After Returning From US

Posts In This Series -
Part-1 | Prologue
Part-2 | Family
Part-3 | Conveniences
Part-4 | Public Infrastructure

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Let’s take a dig at one of the more important motivators for Indian expats to return back to the ol’ country - Proximity to extended family.

It’s important to approach this topic from various angles. As experience might tell you, a family could be a comforting source of love, care and support. But that however could only be one part of the story. The other part gets into the dark underbelly of misunderstandings, games of ego and jealousy, petty politics and the conflict of mindsets between generations.

The wise guys after all came up with a timeless maxim to capture the essence of this latter part of the story..

Distance Makes the Heart Grow Fonder.

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The value you’ll get out of getting back closer to your larger family circle depends on how much you're invested in your people, and whether there are healthy boundaries in place.

Leveraging the easily accessible support system of extended family might do wonders to your well-being, especially for someone beaten down by the loneliness and alienation of living in a foreign country.

You get to enjoy a readily available social circle with minimal effort from your end. This could make your life easier, especially if you're someone like me that lacks the energy and motivation to constantly cultivate new friendships, or even maintain existing ones. I sometimes find the task of "keeping in touch" with friends more like a chore. Because I don’t often take the trouble to do that, quite a lot of my old friendships have faded away.

With extended family, you don't have to keep in regular contact and yet the connections still remain intact.

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Extended family could be invaluable if you have little kids.

My son is now very attached to his grandparents and his uncles and aunts. He gets to hang out with his cousins his age. So the one big advantage we get to enjoy here is his socializing with a larger circle that extends beyond just us parents.

It also frequently gives us parents a much needed break from constantly having to entertain our kids ourselves.

This alone could be reason enough for me to justify that my return back to India has been worth all the trouble and other compromises I’ve had to make.

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Beyond all the fluffy goodness, I have to admit that personally, I’m not much of a family guy.

While I wish the very best for everybody in my extended family, I cannot bring myself to care about being deeply involved in people’s lives. Neither do I want anyone to take a keen interest in my life. I just want us to keep showing up as an occasional blip on each other’s radar.

This applies at a smaller scale even to people in the more intimate inner circle such as parents. No matter how much you love them, once you’re a fully grown adult and have a family of your own, some space between you and your parents is much needed.

It's nice that we're all now geographically closer and get along well, but I’m still uncomfortable being cooped up under the same roof with people longer than necessary. Whenever I’m stuck with elder family folk longer than a few days, I begin to grapple with the disruption in my daily functioning.

Our personal space and privacy goes for a toss. My wife and I can no longer have deeply personal conversations, we can't yell and vent at each other if we get mad at one another. We can't openly talk finances. The range of conversation we could have with visiting friends becomes restricted. We can't freely indulge in things we enjoy - say for example, to pop open a bottle of wine for dinner.

With the orthodox elder generation around, you're obliged to put on a mask of fake personality that's in sync with their social conditioning.

If I'm coming across as a selfish, self-centered individual, I actually wouldn't disagree. I'm more than willing to make sacrifices when someone I care about is facing an emergency and is in desperate need for urgent help. Outside of such rare situations, I really don't see the need to make compromises and sacrifices under normal circumstances.

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It's worth noting that despite your getting along well with your family, your spouse might not, and vice versa. Let's admit it - isn't there always some sort of tension between you and the inlaws? Do you have a tiny little smile of approval on your face right now? :)

Bringing the spouse and in-laws closer is something to be cautious about. If you're fortunate, it could all work out fine. But at its worst, you might risk marital disharmony if there's excessive disruption in your relationship dynamics. It could so happen that your spouse begins to feel suffocated, while you thrive.

Sometimes, placing an ocean or two between you and the family might just give you the much needed breathing space.

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Maybe I’m failing to appreciate the value of family here because I’m not that family-oriented, or because I now take their easy availability for granted and the novelty has worn off.

But with the hindsight of two years behind me, I think getting closer to family should be one of the few motivators, and not the topmost driver for your decision to return back to India. Your joy and the novelty of it all could be short-lived, as you quickly get used to it or grow disillusioned.

Or if you wish to come back to care for your ageing parents, that’s a noble cause no doubt. But then once they depart, you’ll again have to deal with the emotionally draining dilemma of deciding whether to stay back or pack up and move abroad all over again.

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As always, it’s good to remember that overthinking undoubtedly leads to inaction. My approach toward major life decisions is to quickly think through the big picture, and then make the leap of faith without sweating the tiny details. And if you later find that you didn’t make the best decision, then you begin course-correcting. Most things in life are reversible - returning to India and then learning you are no longer cut out for life in India is a reversible situation too. In the end, you’re always richer for the experience.

This approach is what gave me the courage to quit my job, uproot my life in the US and move back to India. Had I sat on my hands debating every little what-ifs, I have no doubt my routine grind in the US would have continued, and nothing would ever have changed.

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And that’s my incoherent, inconclusive take on the topic of family.

In my next post, let’s tackle a lighter topic. Something that doesn’t reach into the deep corners of your conscience and open up cans of worms, such as this touchy topic of family might have.

Next week, I’ll make a passthrough of all the conveniences I’m enjoying in India!

Talk next week,
- Dog

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