They Chose India Instead of Waiting for a Green Card — 13 Years Later, Sumit and Naina Look Back
After more than 12 years in the US — careers on track, EADs in hand, green card and citizenship within a couple of years if they waited — Sumit and Naina moved back in 2013. Thirteen years later they still say they would not reverse the call.
Related planning guides: If this question is part of your broader return plan, also review moving back to India from Canada guide and moving back to India from Germany guide.
From Mumbai to the UK to the US
Sumit's later education and early career were in Mumbai. In June 2000 he went to the UK for nearly two years. In March 2002 he moved to the US — first California on IT consulting gigs, later Pennsylvania (Harrisburg). All told they spent about 12-plus years in the United States before returning to India.
Naina's life joined his around 2000. Both built careers. Both had friends and a social circle abroad. On paper, nothing was "broken."
Why leave a predictable US life
Jobs were fine. Growth was fine. Still, something felt incomplete. Both stayed tightly connected to family in India. Youth abroad was acceptable; aging parents and retirement as perpetual outsiders was not.
Naina put it bluntly: no matter how many years you live in the US, no matter citizenship, you can still feel like you are never fully "from" there. They also had two children — a boy and a girl, both teens by the time of this conversation — and did not want them growing up with only a thin monthly bond to grandparents and almost no real relationship with cousins.
Sumit framed the long-term risk as guilt: when parents need you in old age and you are a flight and a visa away, many NRIs live with that weight. His parents are now in their eighties; when the family returned, they were around seventy. The window was real, not theoretical.
Fulfillment, for him, showed up in a daily habit: every morning in the US he checked what was happening in India — economy, politics, family news. His mind still lived partly at home. Infrastructure and cars in the US were excellent. That was never the whole of life.
When party talk became a real plan
They always assumed they would return someday. So does almost everyone at desi parties — "R2I" is the endless conversation, and few people act.
Serious planning started around 2009. Their son was about two. The logic was sharp: if you wait until kids are 12–15, the uprooting hurts everyone more. Aim for a window where the older child is entering early school years in India so language and curriculum shocks land when adaptation is still possible.
They targeted roughly 2012–2013. Economy and logistics slipped the earlier year; 2013 is when the family actually moved. Flexibility mattered — rigid milestones without slack demoralize people when real life intervenes.
No green card safety net
They held EADs. Waiting a couple of years could have meant green cards and then citizenship. Many friends keep that US return option open forever.
Sumit and Naina chose the opposite: if we go, we go. Challenges with food, spice, health, and school were expected. Keeping a mental exit hatch, they believed, would make every hard week an argument for flying back. That decision is the spine of their story.
If you are still weighing visa timing against school timing, the USA return planning page and how to prepare to return help you sequence without pretending one checklist fits every family.
Biggest fears before the move
A 2012 India visit landed near a national shock around violence against women. With a toddler daughter, Naina questioned whether India was safe enough. Sumit's counter was not denial — hard things happen in the US too, often outside the bubble many Indian social circles live in. They talked it through and took the risk with family support as the buffer.
Other fears: classroom size (20 kids with aides versus 35–40), medical quality, adjustment speed for the children. Research into metros left them more confident that healthcare in places like Hyderabad and Bangalore had closed much of the gap for families who can pay for good care.
He also flipped the risk framing: when Indians first land in the US they accept debit-card friction, credit history zero, and total unknown. Moving back to a country you know, with family on both sides, should not feel scarier than that — yet it often does.
How they actually moved
Naina was working for a government pension-benefit organisation in the Washington, DC area (she names it as a public pension-benefit role). There was no India transfer path, so she quit. Someone had to be on the ground for school start and settling the kids.
June 2013: Naina and the children went to Bangalore to live with Sumit's brother's family. Their son Parth's admission had already been arranged with family help after school visits. Sumit stayed in the US on salary until an internal transfer could be negotiated.
That split was intentional. One income kept the finances alive. Family housing meant Naina did not have to fight for rentals and gas connections alone while managing two small kids and early health issues.
Jobs, transfer, and choosing Hyderabad
Sumit's US MNC healthcare employer did not make transfer easy. Leadership on both sides took months. He reached Bangalore in October 2013, still working US hours into early 2014, then sat formal interview rounds with India engineering leadership. He joined around March.
Odd detail: the company had no Bangalore office. Choices were Noida, Gurgaon, and Hyderabad. He picked Hyderabad as a fresh city — never lived there — with his brother's endorsement. Worst case, re-route to Bangalore later.
Local job market in 2013 felt brutal. In the US he still got recruiter mail; in India, silence was common. City choice still mattered: IT-heavy metros (Bangalore, Hyderabad, Noida, Gurgaon) beat sentimental picks with thin opportunity. Mumbai was ruled out on infrastructure after visits.
Naina found work within months of settling. Their advice to friends: pick the city that matches your industry first, then optimize lifestyle inside that constraint.
Money without a magic number
Sumit did not set a single corpus target as a gate. He already had some India real estate (including a Bangalore purchase around 2009), had been investing in Indian mutual funds and stocks since the mid-2000s, and used the old R2I Club forums (started by a member known as RRK) to learn 401(k)/IRA exit and staggered withdrawal questions.
He rejected the forum culture of "only move after this net worth." Waiting for perfection, in his view, is how kids age past the window you actually care about. Liquid cash was not enormous; open mind plus continued earning in India was the plan — even though 2013 was a weak economic year to arrive.
They nearly bought a US house around 2007 when everyone else was buying. They walked away when job markets felt soft. Later they were grateful: one less asset to sell or rent while packing a life.
For a structured money sequence before you move, start with the financial checklist for NRIs and how to plan finances when moving back.
Kids: silence, rashes, and the first year
Their daughter, about two and a half, went to a preschool in Bangalore. Teachers told Naina they did not know what language the child knew — she used sign language and barely spoke for roughly two months. At home with cousins and grandparents she talked freely. Naina frames it as shyness with strangers more than a calculated accent fear at that age — though she also notes older kids do fear being mocked for sounding American or for "acting American" over food and boiled water.
Their son remembered Chuck E. Cheese and US school; for years he carried an urge to "go back." At twelve he noticed he had more years in India than in the US. By the time of college decisions, he no longer wanted the US track.
Health: bug bites, rashes, hyper-sensitive skin, constant early doctor visits. Family knew which clinics to use. Without that ecosystem, Naina says she would have struggled badly — and many families reverse the move when kids "don't settle," sometimes before giving bodies and routines a fair season.
Curriculum and college: stop forcing your 1990s map
Their son eventually moved toward Cambridge rather than a heavy board-and-essay path. Sumit watched how he learned: projects, machines, short pointed answers — not long discursive papers. Forcing the wrong exam style was pointless.
On JEE: Cambridge is not a ban. Classmates still prepared and some cleared competitive Indian seats. Roughly 70% of topics overlap board syllabi; delivery order differs. Effort and resources matter more than brand loyalty. Their son declined JEE and declined forcing Indian private options via SAT alone — he chose Europe (Belgium) for mechatronics-related undergrad, using US citizenship as mobility, not as a mandate to return to America.
Both parents push a harder truth: many Indian families still treat one exam as the only respectable path while the job market for undifferentiated engineering is crowded. Know the child. Offer options. Let late-teen decisions stick so the kid owns the consequences.
Trade-offs after 13 years
Evenings can be heavy if you support US clients — Sumit often starts late morning and works into US hours. Weekends are protected. One parent (Naina) worked more with Asia-facing teams so evenings at home stayed covered. School drop-offs became the daily talk time when evenings were not free.
Food nostalgia is real: Mexican, Thai, and other US favorites hit differently even when Hyderabad has excellent options. That is a real trade, not a catastrophe.
What they gained: extended family, kids who know cousins and grandparents as living relationships, help at home that makes dual careers workable, and the chance to give back in small ways — mentoring juniors at work, treating household staff with dignity, wider perspective when guiding their own children abroad later.
What they tell people still stuck at parties
- Spousal alignment is non-negotiable. If only one person wants India, the gate stays open and the experiment often fails.
- Close the "one year trial" loophole if you want the move to stick — or be honest that it is a trial and plan money and school for a reverse.
- Pick the city for jobs first (IT metros if that is your market), then optimize lifestyle.
- Budget a hard first year. Job transfer, kids' health, school culture — none of it is instant.
- Kids can still go global later. Their son left for Europe after Indian schooling with family roots intact. That was the design: roots first, world second.
- Mindset is half the battle. Years after returning, people still asked if they could possibly be happy. Naina's answer: happiness is not a geography monopoly. Trust yourself and the people around you.
Until six or seven years after the move, people kept asking how they could still be happy after ten years in the US. Their answer has not changed: decide, commit, and build the life you actually want — not the one that looks best in a WhatsApp comparison.
Sumit and Naina's path is not a template. Dual-career IT families with metro options and family housing on arrival face different math than a single-income return to a smaller city. The through-line is still useful: they knew what they were buying — time with parents, kids who know their people, and a life that does not require waiting for a card in the mail — and they paid for it with career risk, a hard first year, and a closed exit door.
Personal experience shared in interview format — not immigration, financial, legal, or tax advice. Complex cross-border cases need qualified professionals.
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