"I left my heart in San Francisco.." goes the popular song and I quote it here because last evening nothing could have captured my mood better. Yes, I confess, my husband and I belong to the ever growing group of NRIs (Non Returning Indians as the leading lady of Swades would say) who have left the US to "come back" to India. Let this not be read as a patriotic statement (Swades style) where the desire to do something for our motherland drove us to come back. Primarily it was a realisation that a rapidly growing India was now able to offer the same comforts and professional recognition that a US educated Indian did not get here a decade ago.



The newspapers shouted each morning how the largest companies in the world were looking at India as their fastest growing market, how they were hiring here and how more and more board rooms and corner offices were being filled by people of Indian origin. And as we read all this we told ourselves that we would be foolish not to cash out on what was suddenly our biggest asset- our fundamental Indian-ness combined with a primarily western education and work ethic. We fancied that we would be the group that would help the floundering western companies find their way through the maze called India. We would understand e-mail etiquette, voice mail and Stock Grants while being able to handle the Mr. Patil and Sharma Ji who rides the local to Church Gate from Ghatkopar every day and expects that at 5 pm he should be allowed to shut shop and go home. We could eat "Burritos" while chewing paan.



So we packed up our neatly manicured homes, centrally cooled and heated lives , car-pool lanes and Sunday morning breakfasts at Hobees and moved to Bangalore, Delhi and Mumbai.



The outcome has been a bag of surprises and shocks. First a realisation that our basic Indian-ness was limited to being able to read and write a local language, digest Indian food and sing Bollywood songs. In many ways America had crept into all of us and changed our measures of the good, the bad and the ugly. My parents laugh at us when we are shocked by a taxi guy who bangs our car at a traffic signal and then stands there looking injured with no insurance to cover him. We are still mistakenly awestruck by the so called "Spirit of Mumbai" when it is no more than the selfishness and helplessness of a people who trudge back to work despite, floods, terrorist attacks and atrocities, because they are unwilling and unable to raise a voice in protest. No one in the US and the rest of the Western World would have stood for such gross neglect and let it pass practically unnoticed.



As for the every day small things, I personally have come to realise that unless you are living in small town like Panchkula, India is as, if not more, expensive than the US. Real-Estate, Cars, fuel costs almost two times as much as the equivalent place in the US. Food costs as much- a single slice of Pizza from Sabarros at a food-court at a mall in Gurgaon is Rs. 87- that is almost a $1.50- exactly what it costs you in the US! The luxuries that we convince ourselves matter- such as a chauffeur, help at home- are a necessity in India where you have to clean your house every day and if you venture to shop or watch a movie, you need a chauffeur to find you that elusive spot for parking.



So the "home-coming" hasn't turned out to be all we thought it would. And yet there has been one unforeseen benefit. At least in our case we moved to India just a year before the current crisis struck the US and ended the four years of euphoria. Everyone who meets us calls us "lucky" because we managed to "get out in time". Who would have thought that India would rescue us from the possibility of joblessness, recession and possible economic crisis.



But then that is how life is. We begin a journey with a destination and a route in mind, but as time passes all of that can change. So while I am still debating if we have "come-back" to India or in a couple of years will "move-back" to the US, there is one thing I am certain of- my heart may still be in San Francisco and I may listen to "Sunday mornings Island of Sanity on KDFC.com, I thank God my husband's pay check comes from an Indian bank.