Pranjjal\'s Diary: R2i 2017 Pune; Road to there....through my eyes

[Pranjjal]

It?s been two weeks since we landed in Pune, India.
Thought to jot down and share my experiences with you all.
I?m not that great writer but hopefully you all will enjoy reading my posts.


Little background for those who don?t know about me and my family through this forum. My husband and I we both are Software engineers and were staying in California USA for many years. My son is born in India, we went there when he was 4 yr old.
It?s never been on our radar to go to USA and settle there. Although my DH used to travel to US, UK, Japan for short term assignments I never thought of moving abroad. It was just casual incident that my husband?s company asked him to take up a long term assignment. That time I had taken a break from my career to take care of my son so it was easy decision for us to move and we decided to go, moreover we had a loan of our second property, we thought we?ll stay there for one or two yrs and that will help us to finish home loan quickly. We were in bay area, my DH was working on cloud computing projects, he also got one promotion there and became Senior Program Manager. I also got job, initially worked in a product company and then in a cloud services company. Last 5yrs I was working for Google on various projects. My son studied in a private school in bay area. We enjoyed every bit of our stay there. We traveled a lot; camped at many places, lots of road trips, and vacations. When we landed first impression was US is a very lonely place, but soon we got very busy in our life.


We had only 3-4 best family friends. Strange part of our stay was I never went for a single potluck party there :p. We had only limited friends and limited time to spend.

Decision to r2i wasn?t that difficult for us as well since there was no specific reason that we had to think hard about. We thought to give it a try as this is the correct age of my son to try to settle in India once again. We were waiting for the opportunity to come back. Decision was easy, but I know manage to stay put is hard, also decision should turn out to be correct.


to be continued?.

[Dicky_Bird]

Wow, you actually moved back.
Good Luck, and keep writing and sharing your experiences of R2I.

[Umang]

Fantastic. Can't wait for the rest of the diary. Glad to be here at the beginning of your R2I journey.

[MItoPune]

Thanks for sharing your journey, looking forward to the rest of it.... We are planning for to return to Pune too .... keen to hear from you

It?s been two weeks since we landed in Pune, India.
Thought to jot down and share my experiences with you all.
I?m not that great writer but hopefully you all will enjoy reading my posts.


Little background for those who don?t know about me and my family through this forum. My husband and I we both are Software engineers and were staying in California USA for many years. My son is born in India, we went there when he was 4 yr old.
It?s never been on our radar to go to USA and settle there. Although my DH used to travel to US, UK, Japan for short term assignments I never thought of moving abroad. It was just casual incident that my husband?s company asked him to take up a long term assignment. That time I had taken a break from my career to take care of my son so it was easy decision for us to move and we decided to go, moreover we had a loan of our second property, we thought we?ll stay there for one or two yrs and that will help us to finish home loan quickly. We were in bay area, my DH was working on cloud computing projects, he also got one promotion there and became Senior Program Manager. I also got job, initially worked in a product company and then in a cloud services company. Last 5yrs I was working for Google on various projects. My son studied in a private school in bay area. We enjoyed every bit of our stay there. We traveled a lot; camped at many places, lots of road trips, and vacations. When we landed first impression was US is a very lonely place, but soon we got very busy in our life.


We had only 3-4 best family friends. Strange part of our stay was I never went for a single potluck party there :p. We had only limited friends and limited time to spend.

Decision to r2i wasn?t that difficult for us as well since there was no specific reason that we had to think hard about. We thought to give it a try as this is the correct age of my son to try to settle in India once again. We were waiting for the opportunity to come back. Decision was easy, but I know manage to stay put is hard, also decision should turn out to be correct.


to be continued?.

[Philosopher]

All the best and hope you achieve what you have set out for. Two R2I to Pune (this and Trafford) stories in a week! I had lived in Pune before flying out to pardes, so have a special affinity to the city.
Keep the posts coming..

[RRS]

All the best Pranjjal. Please post atleast once in a while chronicling your journey.

[harlequin]

wish you all the best Pranjjal.

how long did you live in US and how old is your son now?

[Pranjjal]

Our first concern was to provide proper transition to our son. So towards end of yr 2016 we started planning for R2i.
Being Maharashtrians and having spent our initial yrs of married life in Pune my husband was very keen to move to same place. I was ready to move to Bangalore as well because of existence of our employer’s offices there and my company was ready to give me a transfer to Bangalore.
First thing I wanted to make sure that we’ll finish my son’s current school year in USA and also he should be able to attend school in India from very first day. I succeeded in getting the school admission while in USA itself and that made me tension free.
The hardest part was to bid adieu to my job in bay area. When I declared to my boss and his boss about my move their first reaction was we’ve office in India you can continue to work remotely on our projects, I told them my husband most likely go to Tokyo and we may go with him and then they said we’ve office in Japan too. If we R2i then we’ve decided to go back to Pune only. My director said that we can’t afford to loose you, you’re our star performer. He’ll hv a talk with VP regarding me working remotely. I told him if it’s possible then by all means I’ll happily accept it. Our VP, she gave a green signal and asked to check with HR. Finally their efforts went in vein due to complexity of SOWs and I had to leave my job. They started interviewing candidates for my replacement, couldn’t find one until I left. This job helped me growing professionally, provided me extreme satisfaction and 6digits salary as well. Last week of my job I was busy in handing over stuff and in doing knowledge transfer to my team members. I resigned on Friday, 3 days before my flying date and had final team lunch with all my colleagues. I got farewell on a note that I can join the company anytime if incase I come back to USA. It was a tough day for me emotionally.

[animatraj]

Hi Pranjjal, How is your son doing ? We are in similar situation and when R2I, he will be in seventh grade. So - curious on checking about him.

[Pranjjal]

School Admission

For proper R2i planning I started searching and gathering information of various schools in Pune area. Admission related information you can easily find on school’s website. Admission procedure and start date for KG and 1st grade is different than higher grades so I would suggest you should start following school’s website from Nov-Dec of previous yr of ur R2i yr.


Since I was familiar with most schools in Pune it was a little bit smooth task for me to pick few schools for my son.
My son is quite unacquainted with Hindi lang so my priority was to take admission in school which will let us choose foreign lang instead of Hindi, Marathi is compulsory in MH to learn in all schools at least for few academic yrs. As I wanted to opt out from Hindi CBSE board schools were cut off from my search. I only had an option to choose from ICSE board or IB board. IB board schools are quite expensive for DP program. There is one best IB board school in Hinjewadi Pune area called “Mercedes-Benz International School”. Annual Tuition fees for DP program for Indian passport holder students is around 14Lacs and for USC/non-Indian passport holder 18Lacs and other expenses too. I didn’t want to spend this much and moreover the reasons I didn’t want to choose IB board are mentioned here in my post (if incase anyone is interested to read)
So I choose ICSE board for my son. He is a 7th grader. Second priority in choosing school was closest proximity from my home in India. I narrowed down to three schools in West Pune area and followed their website to see when their higher grades admissions are going to start. Schools were very responsive to the email communication. I got all the necessary information from them. I filled online application forms and submitted requested documents. Finally I selected Vibgyor High school Balewadi(we can opt French instead of Hindi if we want to), school requested last three years of Report cards. Initially they said as per their procedure they conduct assessment test for which we have to visit school, but after going through my son’s report cards school authority offered admission directly. We paid admission fee through online banking, no donation and admission got confirmed.