Watch: Scientific Insights into Family Dynamics When NRIs Return to India

4:02 Having fun I said well why not of course I'd love to visit and then my family said well you're going to go to India go to medical school you want to do that here and I was somewhat hesitant because in United States you have to get a bachelor's degree full degree U before you go medical school back in those days in 83 in India you didn't need a bachelor's degree you could go to medical school right after 12th grade so anyways one thing led to the the other I stayed over here I got a Bachelor's in chemistry from Purdue University in in the state of Indiana in United States and then I went to medical school also in the state of Indiana at Indiana University and then I did post-graduate training in Internal Medicine also from Indiana University and I have been affiliated with Indiana University and and other related hospitals right here in Indiana since

5:02 1992 as a doctor and U so that's kind of my background from where my life started out and how I ended up in United States but U some of the things I'm going to say are not intended to be harsh or critical of either about United States or about India but they are intended to improve the lives of people and and what I've learned as a doctor and as a professor is that you have to see and evaluate the world as is not as how you would like it to be so once you understand the world how it is then you can slowly and gradually step by step build on that reality and try to improve so so before I go into to deep into it so I want to say a couple of comments I love India I love Indian civilization and the reason I love

6:02 Indian civilization in India is India has the soil of India has provided food to my ancestors for at least 5,000 years but maybe as many as 30,000 years they have tilled the soil and and my ancestors have probably not actually tilled the soil for last few thousand years they done mostly analytical work the kind of work I'm doing right now but n L they have done that and and the government of India employed my dad provid us a stady paycheck and we were always wellfed and never hungry we always had clothes and we always had housing all that was thanks to government of India so I love India even though down the road I might say critical things but that's intended with love for India not about same way I might say critical things about United States I love United States also the reason I love United States is this is a country that has nurtured my mind given

7:04 Me higher education given me wonderful employment and I have been just like the government of India gave us a paycheck the US government I'm a federal employee US government employee they have given me a study paycheck and I have lived Wonderful Life in this country and I also had the privilege just like my dad had the privilege with that paycheck raising me and my siblings I have raised two wonderful daughters so I love United States for the same reason as well so all the things I'm I'm going to say even they might sound harsh or critical is is not intended to be critical but intended to improve the lives of people all over the world including in India and United States no yeah thanks a lot for such a you know detail a beautiful overview I mean I couldn't do justice to you know talk about those details as you said I think the goal here is to share the insights from the experience and the

8:06 Knowledge that you have and it's your thoughts I mean there is no with any wrong intention about like know life in India or life in us this is to help as you rightly said to improve our own like humans around the world I sure sure sure sure yeah so if we can start maybe if you can share a little bit about you know some of the research that you have done you know especially from a neuroscience perspective in the family Dynamics you know from your own Journey I think that would be helpful and then we can start from there sounds

8:41 Excellent so like I mentioned before Neuroscience was not my main topic of interest just I grew up in a middle class Indian family and just like everybody else's parents they tell their kids study hard and get did a good job that was that was the idea in our household as well and in that idea I don't know how exactly for small multitude of reasons we narrowed down to become a doctor for me in our household and and and I had very little real practical idea of what is it involved in becoming a doctor what do you do as a doctor and what kind of things do you see so so so that was a journey in itself and and that journey is what led me to towards neuroscience and then I'll slowly and gradually wind down that Neuroscience into our present discussion

9:41 Of of of family Dynamics but I want to take about 30 or 60 seconds to also explain my interest in neuroscience and the opportunities for India as I mentioned to you I'm extremely proud of India espe especially the growth economic growth it has done since I have the the the pleasure and and the and the benefit of seeing India from far away in terms of distance and time so I I see the the beauty of India but I also see the the the shortcomings of India not through India's fault through fault of other people we unfortunately still have about 600 million people in India who live close to the the poverty line earning less than $1,500 a year so I just kind of feel like I have a moral obligation to do something if I can do something for them

10:42 As well as for for for me and and one of the things is when you live so far away from India you see huge amount of opportunities being exploited by people all over the world and then you see how those opportunities are being exploited and some some of those opportunities there are multi- trillion dollar opportunities but nobody in India knows about because you haven't you know left India and I've had the benefit of being away from India and I'm in a position in life I have plenty of money I don't need to earn any money so I can dedicate my time to that and and and we we might come back to the nursing homes and and Elder Care Etc in this country and that's a huge opportunity for India I know Modi government is more into manufacturer in India those are important things but I want to bring to the Indian society and the Modi Department of Commerce that there are multiple other opportunities also we should look and these are not small

11:44 Opportunities these are opportunities worth hundreds of billions of dollars and many of them probably go into trillions of dollars so so we'll come back to that in a minute but let me kind of bring myself back to the neuroscience and and the family Dynamics so my journey in Neuroscience was like I mentioned to you earlier not because I decided I'm going to be a neuroscientist and and and and do that mine was a little circuitous Journey so when you are in medical school you do different rotations you spend you are it engineer you know you you spend a little bit learning about chip design Hardware software and so on so forth in medical science you spend a month with the heart doctors you learn about Cardiology month about stomach doctors you learn about GI and so on so forth and one of the rotations that you do is something called forensic pathology forensic

12:45 Pathology is essentially the place where you try and figure out why did somebody pass away and did they pass away from natural causes if it's a natural cause nobody is fault you just go about with the normal of life and and you give the body of the person who's passed away to the family to do the normal funeral rights but you also want to find out did somebody die from homicide some did somebody kill then somebody has to be prosecuted or did somebody commit suicide obviously most societies don't want their citizens committing suicide so you want to find out how many people commit suicide why did they do and what can be done to improve that situation so those those are the normal three things but there was a fourth thing which I did not anticipate and the fourth thing was this was late 1980s and early '90s and one of the things was there was a

13:46 A peak of a drug epidemic in this country the drug was cocaine but there's another version of drug cocaine called crack and with the crack epidemic there was a huge amount of VI in young people killing each other shooting each other especially among African-Americans but in general among the whole population and that I found was was extremely sad and strange among the human Devastation the drug epidemic was doing and I know the drugs are becoming a more problem in India also now so so that's part of my interest to see if if I can use some of my Neuroscience to help people there as well as here and the other category of people that I did not fully anticipate to see was in it actually in reality now have done research that phenomena happens all over the world but happens more so in Western countries developed countries so when people when people

14:49 Are elderly or disabled or chronically sick quite often they have nobody who would look after them and nobody's check in up on them on them on a daily basis to know are they wellfed are they are they healthy are they taking their medication are they living or have they passed away so unfortunately in this country lots of people pass away nobody knows they have passed away and their bodies essentially lay in their own either houses or apartments or condominiums or wherever they are and and then of course when they pass away their bodies begin to decompose and a phenomena that I was not familiar with when white Caucasian people pass away depending on the humidity and the and the temperature and other environmental conditions their body is turned pitch black pitch black just like the hair on your

15:51 Black hair on your on your head or a black thing the device you have on your on your file cabinet and then on that black body if somebody T took a handful of rice and threw and you open the body bag in this country in united we bring bodies in plastic bag you open that and there's this white rice all over within a second you realize this is not white rice these are maggots and and and these are people who passed away through no crime of Their Own no and nobody did any harm to them and they didn't cause any harm but they passed away and and and they just passed away and nobody knows about them that they're living or dead and I just found that scene so disturbing and then like I mentioned you know my background was from a small town in India relatively protected background I had just in my mind just could not fathom and when you open those bodies in the belly and the chest and the stench is just something Beyond

16:52 Imagination and then these insects from there maggots and and insects are kind of buzzing around even though you have a mask on on your face they get in your mask and get in your in your nose or in your ear and it's just an absolutely disgusting feeling and what I learned is that that particular scene gave me a moral Authority to go discuss this underbelly of of Western Society anywhere with anybody because if I'm going to be asked as a doctor in training to have to see the scene people have to know about it and have to be willing to do something about it this cannot go in silence so that's how I started and then of course as a as a as a pathologist you open the skull and look at the brain make sure there's no gunshot wound or there's no stroke or some other injury so when I open this person's skull this brain fell into my

17:53 Hand not like the normal pictures of brain we are all used to but it gray Jello and I still vividly remember this was in 88 88 89 90 time frame and I was thinking I'm working so hard to become a doctor getting education paying student loans borrowing money but is this life all about in the end your gay gray jell kind of you know oozes out and then falls into somebody's hand and I just found that scene extremely disturbing so that's how I got interested in neuroscience and then from there I have found multiple multiple facets of of of human behavior and how this happens now I have multiple you know things on how that happens and how the crime happens and those kind of things and and what I found out was that this phenomenon so since now I'm 60 years old and and I have had time to look back this phenomena actually

18:54 Happens in big cities in India also so this is not and happens in Japan happens in Korea in Europe all over the world but happen tends to happen more so in in urbanized societies and Western societies are all as we know about 100 or 200 years ahead of India in this kind of a phenomenon so so that was kind of my interest into neuroscience and now I'm going to bring it to family and

19:23 Family Dynamics so as I became a doctor navigating through a western Society for when you land from far away is not at all easy and Western Medical Systems are very complex and very difficult to understand so if you land fresh from India and you're not comfortable with the language the culture it's very complicated so people would call me some of the people who would call me would be friends and then friends family and then second their friends and friends so pretty soon at one point about once I went to exchange my iPhone and it it told me how many contacts I have I realized there were 4,000 Indian families in Central Indiana calling me for medical help some of the medical help is very simple I ran out of my blood pressure medication can you write me a prescription so I don't have to go to a regular doctor because I don't have money I don't have insurance so things

20:24 Like that but one of the phenomena would be sometimes the whole family would come and they say well you know and and the way I used to do was I had a huge room where families would sit and then I'll have one person because of privacy Etc come in talk to me so mother-in-law would come and say I'm depressed why are you depressed and their idea was that whatever is ailing me including sad feeling and depression the doctor would have a pill and it would go away but one of the things I've learned is we in the West W Medical Science have not discovered any such pill yet and nor are we likely to discover it anytime in the next 50 to 100 years so I asked them and what I found out was that they were kind of living it's like fish living out of water they're living in a very very difficult hostile environment and then they'll say okay you know the next family member and then the daughter-in-law would come but the daughter-in-law is also depressed but

21:25 Why are you depressed well in reality they basically both hate each other's guts and that's that's the reason they are and and I found this phenomena rather common and and like I mentioned I had left India at the age of 19 so I didn't understand fully the family Dynamics and I didn't quite understand on on why this happens so I'm going to digress for about one minute and explain to you the underlying phenomena that happens in the brain and then from that phenomena I'm going to explain to you on on how that ties into so there is a very nice famous Stanford neuroscientist who's also a primatologist and for those people who don't have medical background primatologists are people who study primates and primates are things like chimpanzees monkeys gorillas they all fall in a in a one large family so his idea was to see how these primates

22:27 Behave in their natural environment not in the zoos because when you put animals in the zoos their behavior gets modified so what he found out in Kenya in a in a n National Reserve was that baboons are most representative of us and the term for us humans in medical science is called Homo sapiens so he he said bonss so he started studying baboons and then he found thousands and thousands of very interesting observations and he's written many books but I'm going to condense his patology to a few seconds what he found out was in every tribe there is alpha male that the top leader the big Big Kahuna the big guy and then there is Alpha minus one alpha minus 2 Alpha minus 13 and to every member of the tribe it's most important that their rank should be preserved even if it's Alpha minus 14 he's willing to kill Alpha - 15 16 17

23:30 Just to keep his-4 Rank and what he and I found out is that when we humans Homo sapiens are in our natural environment we also have hierarchical ranks the whole society structured with those ranks and we do not want to lose our rank so that brings us down to the family in the family quite often the ranks are based on you know how the family has been running the dad has a rank of you know his responsibility in the family mom has a his Rank and then daughters and sons come along so they have obviously their ranks the problem happens is that ranked phenomena if it's a fully functional nice loving family continues for decades and then something strange happens a stranger comes into your family either in the form of a son-in-law or a daughter-in-law but we are going to focus more on the daughter-in-law for this discussion now this person has to

24:32 Navigate their their place in the family on on where do they fit in this hierarchy and nobody wants to be lowest on the rung in the family so they are they have some internal aspirations that you know can I can I improve my rank just a little bit Yeah so they are coming with that aspiration now the problem happens is the mother-in-law is the one who has the highest amount of conflict in this situation and there is huge amount of Indian literature music movies on this topic so I don't need to go into that my interest is neuroscience everybody's familiar with this phenomenon so what happens is mother-in-law and is usually in in Indian households in charge of the kitchen and that's where the daughter-in-law has to interact a mother-in-law has their idea of you know when I'm in the in the kitchen the the chaka and baa have to be on the right side of the cooking range and the daughter-in-law might say well you know

25:33 I accidentally put it on the left side so so either accidentally or she's used to somebody always putting on the L so these small little things happen and this in reality in terms of Neuroscience is a is a phenomena called our our private space private space is if you go to a large Beach that's empty you go sit down put your towel lay on the beach you don't want enough that the whole Beach is empty and the beach is 50 square you know 50 acres you don't want that some other guy who come sit right next to you within three feet of you you want them to sit far away as the beach gets crowded you're willing to tolerate people near you and animals do the same thing in the water they don't want you know animals don't want crowding but now you are in this situation of of crowding where people are crowding each other's space and then in that crowding what happens is animals want esta Lish dominance you know this is my space and this is how it's going to be run and the other

26:34 Person think well you know I mean for two years I've run it according give me at least let me put the my CH bill on this side so the Small Things create lots of friction and then the other thing we have unfortunately inherited for centuries and in our in our culture is the Dy phenomena and that kind of is well known to the Indian Indians and India and around the world creates lots of ill will and so on so forth also but in the end what I found is this doy phenomena is partly getting economic resources but partly it's about dominance that you know you should have given us this much and you didn't give us this much and let's quantify this and and and if you didn't give us let's kind of make you feel bad about yourself so those dynamics of close space and and all these other dominance phenomena are already in play in the in the Indian

27:35 Families and then what happens is then these families some of these families end up in in a totally different culture as for example the culture I'm most familiar with is United States now you have brought this kind of dowy dominance conflict from India as a whole large extended unit over here and when you come to United sayat there is totally different Dynamics at work and some of those Dynamics are well experienced by working couples in India living in urban settings there are the pressure of child care who's going to take care of children house chores who's going to take care of those chores who's going to do shopping cooking cleaning so all those things pose a huge amount of challenge to families in India and around the world and and those challenges are very profound they are not small challenges in United States 53% of the marriages end up in

28:37 Divorce and some of the reason since I'm a doctor and I I I see lots of families Etc and I'm not going to mention the hospital I work for because hospitals don't like my affiliation but over there I've seen thousands and thousands of dysfunctional families and the reasons for that and what I found out is is that when people jump into this marriage situation they have no idea or understanding what they are jumping into and I found out the same phenomena is true in Indian culture you know a nuclear family who's got two sons or two daughters when they are jumping into getting their kids married they have no idea on what they're jumping into and how they should behave in that particular thing and how they have to kind of lower their expectations of dominance and and how to make the new person function and the new person also has to come into that family with some kind of

29:38 Understanding on how they're going to go with the flow and so on so forth so those kind of create huge amount of problems of Dynamics and and and the Indian newspapers are filled with all the devastation that happens from there own and and a small digression I'm going to take in 2016 I went to India to my hometown hasur and in in and I have some connections with the judicial system the legal system and there were elderly grandmas in their 6s 70s in jail because their grand granddaughter committed suicide and and the way the Indian laws had evolved that if your grand if you're not granddaughter if you're D law suicide D law commit suicide you must have done something so by default you are guilty now I don't think any lady in their 60s or 70s Invision spending their old age in a jail so so this is a

30:39 Fairly destructive phenomena and that's the reason I decided to you know bring primatology and Neuroscience into it and what I've learned is our civilization really does nothing to prepare us as families for on how to manage this potential conflict situation and our educational system was really reestablished in late 1700s early 1800s based on the needs of the britishers the britishers had to set up a a kind of a assembly line education with the three hours in mind reading writing arithmetic for example if they are going to have enslaved Indian laborers cut down the trees from our forest and take Lumber back to England to make ships what they want you to know is do you know how to cut down the trees measure the size and make sure all the pieces of lumber are the same size and

31:41 Can somebody count how many Lumber are shipped into the Indian trains Railway system and and how much money is made so that was their main interest and that system is essentially what we have inherited and and expounded on now that system is good it was it was good good enough to prepare me for medical school it was good enough to prepare you for it and and and Chip design education but it really does nothing to help us with these kind of family Dynamic situations so the reason I got interested in you and you got interested in me is now some of these NRI families

32:18 Are thinking of going back to India some of them for a small short time had a conflict of the kind we described in India but then the nuclear family husband wife and couple of kids picked up their stuff moved to United States England Europe Singapore and the problem happens is when they go back that that you know whenever there is a wild fire in the forest you might think the fire is dead but unless all coals have been extinguished with water those ambers are still there the Wildfire could come back so so one of the things and then in in our in our short time there there was a a young lady who had mentioned that she had gone back to those Embers and then ended up you know their nuclear family got destroyed they ended up getting divorc so for every one person who tells us that there are probably another 100 who are kind of struggling and probably 10 20 who are going to get divorced so this is not a small phenomenon so so the reason I wanted to

33:20 Bring all this Neuroscience primatology Etc into into this thing is that people have to really understand going forward who are thinking of forming new family units in India so they think about that how are we going to do this better than all the destructive forces that are already in our brain and secondly for people who already have formed family units and have left their extended families and and moved away from them now they're going to go back the part of the reason those nris like you and me are thinking of coming back to India is number one for the love of India Love of Indian culture Indian food but also some attraction for our families so those families can play a hugely positive role but also can be very destructive so I'm going to give a practical example of the positive role the reason American economy United States economy is so vibrant and the

34:21 Reason you and I got attracted to come here was because of capitalism capitalism has this this wonderful vibrant economy but there's no guarantee in life for anything one day you have a job next day you don't have a job one day you have an income to pay the mortgage pay the rent and have a home and family next day you don't have it you're homeless the Indian extended family that our ancestors had conceived of provides built-in benefit for those kind of things the built-in benefit is you know if two brothers and and dad are living together one of them loses income they're not going to throw the third person out on the street but those benefits may not be visible to a young person's mind when they are young and they may not be needed for 5 10 15 years the other benefit of extended families was and extended families were partly designed by civilization but partly by necessity two three 400 years back

35:23 Around the world everywhere most people died within 7 mile radius of where they were born there were no airplanes there were no trains no automobiles no cars no buses so essentially if your dad had a small plot of land in madhia Pradesh in in in Bal that spot of land was going to be divided between two brothers and they all lived nearby and and now as a grownup adult I know not every extended family in that setting was good but there was a Spectrum there were lots of families very loving so if you are in a loving family with all the family members living nearby certainly nobody would let their family member die and and never be looked at and then let them die and let their dead body I hate to use the word dead body but that's the the real word decompose for weeks or months on end so

36:24 Those were the benefits we had all inherited those benefits is not what you're thinking about what you're thinking about is the conflict in the kitchen and the conflict in the in the family room and all those kind of things so those benefits come further down the road but our brain cannot focus on multiple problems at the same time especially which are not in our immediate Focus the day-to-day conflict might be in our immediate Focus so so that was my reasoning for bringing this this phenomena to the attention that that those people who are thinking of and and and and those people in our audience who are going to watch this YouTube video they may not know that we have a WhatsApp group and in the WhatsApp group there is like five six 700 people and there are men and women and everybody is giving their their own thing and and lots of the ladies have lot of

37:25 Hesitations about going back to India my husband may not support me and and I might get blamed for everything and have no support so those kind of things when they end up in India for nris to come back are going to be hugely challenging and and it's better to think about those things up front rather than it's better to learn how to swim before you jump with all four into the water and then find out I don't know how to swim how I get out of here so so that was the phena I wanted to bring to your attention and again these are all things which are manageable you know when I was 19 years old in a small town in Hur I didn't know how I'm going to become a doctor in United States when you were 15 years old in India you didn't know how you going to become a chip designer but you slowly and gradually learn these things and manage these things so same way the things that I mentioned to you they are manageable but they are not

38:27 Something that we cannot overcome at all but first of all people have to recognize that these potential problems are built into our culture and our civilization and some people experience them to mild degree and then they are all grown up adults about it and manage it and kind of smooth it out but there are certainly a a significant percentage where that's not the case and then it can it can lead to all kinds of destructions and so on so forth so so that was my my main focus and I think I have kind of very nicely tied down my knowledge of Neuroscience and family Dynamics and primatology and and so on so forth so I don't really have anything specific more to add to the story I gave you but i' be happy to answer any questions you have based on your time constraint first of all yeah thank you very much for giving a such a nice overview bringing you know wealth of knowledge of so much of books into like you know concise information and trying to present this information from a

39:29 Scientific perspective right especially with the neuroscience chatology and you know from a scientific background so maybe few questions from my side based on the discussion so far I think you kind of mentioned about some of these family Dynamics in terms of you know the hierarchy and so on as we have evolved you know with you know different information different do you see things have changed like what it was in 1980s or 1990s to 2020 in terms of these hierarchy or the power or do you think it's still the same just curious on that one part from

40:05 Us what I found out was it has certainly changed but it has not necessarily changed for the better so let me explain to you when you are living in a hostile hostile environment in a household you are really living like a hostage over there when you're living like a hostage and and not to go too much into the weeds of Neuroscience there is a part of our brain called the sympathetic nervous system which is like the accelerator so then continuously your blood pressure is high and under stress you eat more your cholesterol goes high and as you eat more and gain weight you become more prone to diabetes that leads to heart disease strokes and all kinds of health issues and health challenges so living in a in a unpleasant hostile environment is not good for anybody at all so what I found out in in that same small town in India was there were lots of

41:07 Mother-in-laws who had learned that whatever we say it can be held against us in a court of law so we are going to say nothing we're going to keep our feelings in there and in their own household behave like basically captive audiences and just do the mechanical work of running the household running the kitchen and that that also is not good for for mental health and and so so you know if you are living in your own house and you can't express your thoughts I mean you and I are just expressing our thoughts and you can see on what different parts of the world and what different disciplines I bring my thoughts but if in the beginning of this video you have told me Dr Kalia you can talk about everything but you can't talk about topic a I just feel constrained all during this or vice versa so what what I found out was that we as Indians and Indian civilization need to have an open discussion so when we are living in a household we are living a a life of

42:09 Joy rather than a life of you know something has to be done and and and the mouth has to be kept shut now for certain things it's important to keep your mouth shut but at the same time it's nice to be able to come out and say okay you know person X in the house this bothers you person why in the house this bothers you how can we come to a happy thing just like I gave you the example of the beach if there is a 100 Acre Beach nobody's expecting that the whole Beach is empty you'll come sit right next to me 3 feet away sit far away from me so that's our personal space being invaded so same way whenever there's going to be two people living together this always going to be some level of conflict and the conflict happens because you're invading each other's space I like my pen to be held parallel to the ground you like to be held you know in in a perpendicular to the ground in a pen holder so that conflict is going to be there but as long as you and

43:10 I both understand each other that you know if we keep it like this or like this really doesn't change life that much sometimes if I make the mistake of keeping it like this you learn to forgive me or sometimes if you like it this way I you know I accidentally bump it off so so the idea has to be so people can talk about these things so that's what our civilization has to done has to do and if I was the king of the world and I had unlimited resources tomorrow what I would do is design a 3 to six-month course in Indian civilization the reason I use three to six months is in the United States we're used to a semester system rather than the whole year of of of premarital counseling where the young people who are going to get married they should understand what kind of challenges come across but also the whole family get involved and not only the boys family but the girls family and all of learn about these things so that leads to a a happier

44:13 Harmonious life and and what I've learned is I I've told this story to at least a 100,000 patients my goal for every human being is to be happy healthy and productive and that's every human being's goal for themselves so everybody in India has the same goal it's no different anywhere else everybody wants to have a happy healthy and productive family however what I've learned is this kind of thing doesn't accidentally happen like the rain accidentally falls on you when you're walking in the rain you know and you get wet you have to have umbrella to stop the rain so same way these conflicts are going to fall on you whether you learn how to manage them or let them accidentally fall on you and when they accidentally fall on you they are very very destructive and and very very disruptive and that takes away a lot of people's creative energies people who are going to go out work they can't focus on their work people who are at home their blood pressure is high

45:13 They're tense they're they're ready to you know basically kill each other and so so so yesterday and I'm not going to mention the name yesterday I talked to a gentleman from Singapore and we again came to connect with each other through through the WhatsApp group that you or or or or the people in the background have started and and he was very nice and honest and and he was explaining that it's good thing we don't have guns in India and like United States He said otherwise there could have been mass shooting in our family there was so much tension and these are like six people you know living in a small confined space what happened is he went from Singapore to India and because of Co he got stuck in in that family Dynamic structure and there was so much hostility and he said he just felt horrible at the end of it and you don't want to take your little kids to India and your spouse to India and then

46:14 Have this kind of a negative feeling so so I think that's where education and learning about these Dynamics ahead of time can mitigate 99% of the problem got it definitely so I think think I have a couple of questions that I want to skip that okay from time so the first question is maybe related to NR right I know we kind of touched about some of these family Dynamics you know the civilization in India and I know it's kind of evolved like you know from a big joint families to like nuclear families and still like you know still happens but someone who moved from India to abroad where they experience different culture I think you kind of slightly touched on the topic sure somebody who has been living in a broad light State us for example who has been living there for more than a decade you know two decades there is definitely an influence of the US culture and kind of changes you know with the kids with the spouses with the family so maybe my question there was the external

47:16 Factors like especially where you live in you know in terms of like the Dynamics that we talked about how does that influence and how does that adapt us you know based on the environment and how our thought process could change that's one question and then I will ask

47:30 The second question after that I think you when they're trying to move back what are the some of the Practical tips that they have to go through so I'm going to use example in in in recently from and I'm going to give my thanks to you there was a video that I saw you and the gentleman from Bangalore but in that algorithm I don't know whether I searched for it or your algorithm or somebody sent me a video of a young lady who is in in United States lives in San Francisco area and I think she either left a job and was and went to India and started some company called fire Freedom Early Retirement or something or or it was somebody else I don't remember all the details but I remember the gist of the story the gist of the story was in San Francisco she could get up in the middle of the night hire a uber go anywhere or get in the bus go anywhere

48:31 Nobody's stopping her yeah she could lay take a beach towel go lay in the beach do anything they wanted nobody's stopping her lay in a park do anything shop anywhere go anywhere do anything so there's full freedom but along with freedom comes the responsibilities like you mentioned you know there is no help to do anything and if you know if one member get sick and and we already talked about elderly being neglected in this country and and and The Economic Opportunity that I would hope Indian Society can exploit from that but essentially there is no help so when you end up in India and extended family like I mentioned to you there's the economic benefit of insulation if there's you know one person doesn't have a job or income there's a benefit of help somebody gets sick child care this that and the other so so the problem happens is when people come from so much freedom and and none of

49:33 This freedom is you know anything bad about it I mean you're just free to do whatever you want to do yeah but now you're suddenly in a in a structure where if you know I don't know whether what percentage of your audience are familiar with a word or a piece of clothing called bikinis you know bikinis is this tiny little clothing on the top and and the bottom and ladies there are lots of people in the western culture wear that and I'm sure there are lots of Indian young ladies wear that now can you imagine if you go in a traditional family on a family vacation and and you get your bikini out and jump in the pool well that's going to create a scene so so those kind of things or lots of ladies in the Western World drink alcohol and I'm not saying I like alcohol I personally would prefer that nobody in the world rank alcohol but clearly in the Indian culture where we are Al consumption is not a problem and I just purely coincidentally had been made aware of a of a Facebook group

50:34 Called NRI moms and it was just amazing on on how much you know ladies drinking alcohol or not drinking how much conflict was was already present in United States in the families now you take all that conflict into a Indian household you just you know looking for a recipe of those old ambers to kind of expl explored and and those are the things people have to know that when you are living in a extended family and and your extended family has never left a small town in up they have no idea that halfway around the world people are drinking ladies are drinking alcohol and running around in bikinis you just think when you see something like this there's going to be problem so the idea is for people to become aware so I think those are the kind of things that I would say did I answer your question specifically kind of touchs a little bit I think just depending on where you are it has the different pros and cons and responsibility the freedom and

51:34 Aspects so one thing that I wanted to check with you was do you have any practical tips you know for someone who has been in like a nuclear family right I mean you know when I say nuclear it's like you know you spouse you know with couple of kids or and children yes yeah and you know who has been living in this Western world with a lot more flexibility and and so on and if they're considering about moving back to India what are some of the Practical things that they have to talk through like you know openly discuss and think through like the point that you mentioned learn the swimming before you deep dive right some of the things that they have to consider before they return back to India any practical input there yeah yeah so I'm going to again bring my

52:19 Experience of Neuroscience and being a doctor into this in that medical setting Where I Was I saw lots of conflict among the couples what I found out was none of the couples whose conflict continued and did not improve were willing to lay their cards out honestly openly on the floor they they all would have some secret agenda and they would want the doctor to tell the other person to change but they won't tell you what what they they're thinking is so for the families to function properly everybody has to be honest so I'm going to pretend like that I am a female I'm Mrs Smith I'm 35 years old and I like having my alcohol drink when the men are drinking in the family and I know fully well that I'm Mrs Smith and and that's going to cause conflict in my family so the the

53:19 Thing to tell is if that alcohol drink is that important to you tell your husband hey I'm not going to stop drinking just because we are in BR in up or in in Kolkata in in in in or Mumbai or wherever I'm going to continue doing this is that going to be acceptable ask your in-laws or don't go live in the same household maybe live nearby each other so there are multiple ways of mitigating this kind of a problem but people have to be honest if if a alcohol drink or or whatever you know behavior is that important to you and you're not going to change let somebody know about it don't kind of you know surprise people that you know if if you are in a joint extended family and suddenly somebody you know men are drinking and they offer you a drink okay I'll have a drink too and somebody your mother-in-law is ready to have a heart attack while you're having a party so so those are the I think is the important point is put your cards honestly and

54:20 There's a very good possibility a small group of people might decide you know this is just never going to work for us in India even though it works for us in United States or Europe so maybe we should just go back to visit India and not go there to live or or or live in a modified kind of environment so I think the the key or whatever bothers you sure you know and and the whole reason this destruction happens is when people are dishonest then they're not honestly willing to open their brain and their mind and put their their cards if if everybody like when we are playing that poker you know if everybody's cards were visible to each other there would be no need to be guessing you know what is he caring in his hand so I think Honesty is the only way for this thing to make work and that that premarital you know six Monon course housing again that also has to be honest people have to learn honesty that if you are going to make remember this honesty is going to mean

55:21 When you are elderly and not able to take care of yourself do you want somebody to come and and take care of you give you food your medical help with love and respect and a smile or somebody neglect you or abuse you so so that neglect and abuse that I mentioned is is a huge Economic Opportunity and maybe we'll talk down the road for Indian civilization to capitalize in on Western Civilization but that's essentially what ends up happening and in this country in United States you can hire people would give you the food and also give you the medicine but they may or may not give you with the smile they may not May or not give you with the love but if you want that down the road then you have to keep the family Dynamic respectful where everybody is mutually loved and respected and that in my mind is the most important thing for human beings because we all crave the same thing love respect to be part of a family unit

56:21 Where we are where our feelings are kept in in mind so no yeah no yeah thanks a lot for sharing your thoughts and some insights and how to think about right I think the key thing is don't hide any of your thoughts put everything out that's more important to you so that you discuss it beforehand and make sure that you are aligned if that makes sense to move or not move or you know whatever practical way to handle that no so thank you very much Dr Kalia for your time and really appreciate you providing a lot of insights and you know from a scientific perspective you know how the family Dynamics works and you know how to think about it and you know some of the things that you mentioned especially the pre-counseling you know think talk through all the details beforehand and so on which are very important especially for someone making this big decision you know whether it's living or moving to another country and so on so that would be very very you know valuable to all our audience

57:22 So thanks a lot for you know sharing your thoughts on that thank you very much it was a pleasure talking to you and I hope that some of the insights I bring would would play a constructive and a useful role in our civilization and especially for NR thinking of moving to India yeah thanks a lot thanks byebye