r2i forum

part1

Firstly congrats on having this website. It has taught me lot of things. I will briefly blog the diary of my return back to India. There are numerous threads that give a very good list of how to do various things like packing, financial planning, schooling etc.....so I will stick with the thought process and how we planned things.

WHO AM I:

I am a physician. I grew up in hyderabad. I never planned to leave hyd(I went to osmania) so I had not even seen a hostel, till I was 27 yrs old, when I finished my MD in India I realised that for financial and career reasons I had to leave in India( I wont make things negative by talking about the nepotism that was prevalent in my world then).

But the muhurtam of my the day I left India was excellent. I got into a speciality where there was great shortage of doctors and in 10yrs made very quick strides in financial and academic areas. I missed the realestate boom but overall have some properties in hyderabad and parental house and there is no one doing my kind of surgeries in HYD.

I spent 6 yrs after leaving HYD in UK and 4 in the USA.

FAMILY BACKGROUND:

dear wife does not work. but she is the great driving force and the eternal optimist. She can make any situation optimistic. very practical too. I willl mention her in many parts of my diary and you will see why I am lucky. I have 2 girls aged 6 and 8 yrs old. My old parents live in HYD. My brother did his masters in USA and came back and has started 2 successful businesses in India.

WHY NOT USA:

Please do not think I am generalising here, these are my reasons.

a) unbelievably high taxes.
b) the high taxes we pay go into funding 2 useless wars, and giving a lot of freebies to people who dont really need them.
c) 'We will and we can fix anything' kind of society which is bad thing in medicine.
d) "If the doctor cannot fix anything and everything now then we will sue you" kind of patients.
e) Irrespective of what anyone says kids do not grow up in a culture remotely indian. Yes you can send them to balavihaar, music, hindi classes but this is USA. Whether Indian culture is better or not is a different discussion.
f)I was getting closer to getting a green card and I realised that if I get a GC then I will get stuck here for another 3-5 yrs.
g) I like money but money in itself had no meaning. People like money for 2 reasons. 1. to buy what they want, 2. to show what they bought, to the people they want. For me there is very little I want, and even if I bought what I liked there are few people (dear ones) in the US that I can show them to. Things like job security and retirement are all very superflous. My dad was very poor and we did not have many luxuries yet he raised 2 doctors and an engineer.
h) Reading philosophy like the black swan (more about this later).

part 2 coming soon.

Part 2:

WHY INDIA:

1. Parents. like every one else. This is the strongest reason. For boys dads are their super heroes. To see the old frail man in the airport not taking his eyes off you for a second while you are busy checking in is not worth it. I went to india in feb 2010 and the scene in the airport was not worth it. I decided then that I will advance my decision to come backt to India by 2 yrs.
2. Social cause: We all need to serve a bigger social cause. As a physician I studied with the tax payers money in India and I am serving US and paying 50 % tax so that US economy gets better. I want to do something back home.

3. Kids: No question my indian upbringing is what I am. Indian professionals are the most preferred in the world for their work ethic( medical and non medical). There is no question in my mind that early Indian schooling is very instrumental in this. There is no reason why an 18 yr should have a choice between taking an year off for scuba diving in brazil versus joing med school. Believe me if I was 18 and I was given a choice I would have gone scuba diving. Early emancipation and undue sexual freedom are my big issues with kids growing up here.

4. Small things: Irani chai, mangoes, sithaphal, south indian coffee, hyderabad biriyani, first day first show in sudarshan 70 mm,......priceless.

5. adulation: I dont like to admit it but some what I do, I do for adulation. If I operate for 4 hours do an emergency procedure I get adulation( believe me, no amount of money is worth it), I somehow thought getting adulation from my own people is probably better than getting it from some else.

6. Service gap: This is a very important reason. Over the last 10 yrs I have gone back to India 3-4 times an year. Both my parents have various ailments. My observation is that India has excellent doctors the problem is with the hospitals. There is not enough reinvestment into these organisations to build world class organisations( I admit there are exceptions). So in the USA you would get a reasonable standard of care irrespective of where you you went. In India you could get excellent care( joint surgeries in HYD) or terrible care( acute resus). I my aim is to bridge this gap. There is no reason why the best brains in the world cant get together a good organisation. I intend to build one. I would like one day, to come on this forum and say that you next of kin would care as good as the one in US if you came to my hospital. So this is my biggest driving force.

hero heroine have met now the real movie inculding the villian will come in the next part.

Doc,

My very bestest wishes on your decision, this country needs you.

gujju

Great. Welcome back. Very inspiring to see such people coming back to India to settle.

OP
Very nice dairy..I love it when people talk of giving something meaningful back to the society. Very nice attitude. Yep, time with aging parents are priceless. I hope things go smoothly for you and you enjoy your time in India.

Very good intentions.. Best wishes for their implementation..

rajradio;3003732. Social cause: We all need to serve a bigger social cause. As a physician I studied with the tax payers money in India and I am serving US and paying 50 % tax so that US economy gets better. I want to do something back home.

Kudos to you :thup:
Very nicely written diary. Clear intentions are imminent from a honest clear thought. Wish you the best.

[QUOTE]first day first show in sudarshan 70 mm,......priceless.So true. :thup:

Cool diary, looking forward to reading it. So the r2i date would be mid 2012?

thanks for the responses continuing on...

Dear friends I promised to introduce the villian. Meet the villian.

IT IS OVERANALYSING and MICROMANAGING.

As you realise we all go through these trials and tribulations. Then you keep on asking yourself am I doing the right thing? then there is the bigger picture. In its path you will get numerous obstacles how you deal with them depends on how much importance you give to small things. Some of the common questions that come to the mind are

1. how will children adjust. This bothered me for a long time. I just bit the bullet and put them in a CBSE school. So far they have fared far better than the adults. Most children have flexibility way more than we give them credit for. in the 1 month that they are there the kids now say what re, why re, like that only . I just love it. The younger one speaks excellent telugu. The older one though is mortified at the thought reading telugu text book, but we are working on it.

2. How will we cope with the power cuts and water shortage: cmmon just like every one else.

3. My wife complains that everybody thinks that we lost a job in recession that is why we are back. I said that is a good thing. There is no bura nazaar.

4. Older child complained that the uncles aunts are interfering too much with her life and personal things. I asked her if she preferred that or going to to tennis on monday, swimming on tuesday, balavihaar on sunday. She laughed and said she prefers the former.

5. what to do with the stuff we accumulate in US: we decided to ship the dinner ware and china with a friend who was moving a whole container. We will miss our big TV that we had in USA, but no big deal. we were going back to the parents house in hyd so we did not need much stuff to start a life in india.


So, as you can see friends, these small issues occupy our mind too much and prevent us from going back and or delay us. Worse still, they can create a sense of lingering unhappiness since you miss the big house or the big TV. Honestly, our house in US was 4750 sq ft and the whole family lived in less than 1500 sq ft, and remaining was there in case we had a party.

So the decision making must independant of these factors. Think and see if staying back in the USA is in your genes. See if you would like retire in peace, drive a big car, go to same parties with same faces every weekend. But I did not want that, so I made a decision whatever be the cost I will go back to India. now in that path there are many small issues that I think I will overcome when I look at the bigger picture.

Meet villian number 2

friends and advisors.

So having made the decision to go back you sound it to your friends. Almost 80% of them will say no. Some will tell you that you can do more for india and staying in USA and sending money to some social organisation. I am ashamed that one of my doctor friends was arguing this logic for the entire 3 hours of our farewell party. He was the host I said nothing. no one needs our money. OUr mind(intelligence) is and heart(compassion) are the greatest resources and that cannot be sent by fedexed from US to India. I will not give any more examples, suffice it say that people defend their plans and actions in many ways and potential returnees should not be put off by the general negative talk that they encounter from people who could not and did not have the courage to do so.

The plot thickens....