I will be honest I have been searching for a space to write. I know I will not be able to sustain writing a diary or a journal offline. It had to be something online. It would have been great if it wasn’t during the age of AI. Because building an audience with AI results at the top of every search keyword has impacted all bloggers and webmasters. I feel there is no point in me blogging because it won’t fetch me any revenue or audience.
Add to this the dwindling attention span of every human. I almost know of nobody who takes pleasure in long form reading anymore. So if I am writing content for people to read – who will read it? I do not have an answer to this. But maybe it is more important for me at this moment to just write and feel like I am building something. In the worst case, I will have at least had a chance to put my thoughts to words.
Ever since my return to India, life and career have been so tough that I need a space to vent. After spending 8-years abroad in glamorous Shanghai, I am finding it incredibly hard to adjust back into life in India as an ex-NRI. And I know I am not alone. I am aware there is a lot of reverse migration underway recently. Not always due to a personal choice but maybe because of downsizing in tech companies, political policies and other socio-economic factors. No matter what an individual’s reason may be to return, the idea of readjusting back to life in India is unpleasant. And the longer you have been away, the harder it is.
Writing about life in India after moving back from US, UK or Europe is an emotionally complex topic. There is no single dimension to this situation. For example, prior to coming back to India I always thought it would be the NRI income I would miss the most, unfortunately that’s not the case. While money and taxes are certainly a pain in India, it is not the biggest challenge for someone moving back to India. The toughest aspect is the lifestyle change required resulting in a sub-standard quality of life for even well-salaried Indian professionals.
You can treat this space as a place to read about the observations from a returnee to India after living several years abroad. I cannot guarantee if it will help someone decide on returning back to India. But it will certainly resonate with other ex-NRIs who have already come back to India from US or any other country.
Indian GDP may have surpassed that of Japan but the country has not changed at the ground level. It literally looks like just how I had left it 8-years ago, except there are a bunch of QR-codes hanging everywhere now.