This recent reversal of the earlier trend is due to these families’ desire and bid to familiarise their children with the Indian behavioural, cultural and moral value systems. An introduction to the Indian social code is important enough for these families to relocate themselves for a few years. They hope that this experience will give their children a grounding in Indianness, and help them have the best of both the worlds.

P. Chauhan’s children are sixth-generation Canadians but she decided that before they got too involved in the business of living abroad, they should be acquainted with their ancestral land. So, she packed her bags and along with her three daughters left the comfort and familiarity of Edmonton, Canada, to land in Chandigarh. She chose Chandigarh over Patiala, her hometown, because she felt that City Beautiful was a place her daughters would be proud to belong to. Chauhan is the proprietor-owner of Royal Cuts in Zeller’s, a chain of giant department stores in Canada. In addition to managing the four outlets under her charge, Chauhan is also a cosmetologist and professional trainer in hairstyling, nails and aesthetics.

Moving to India was a big decision for Chauhan, for she had to weigh the options here against her lucrative business there. A sense of pride in her roots was the main motive behind the temporary migration of the family. "Edmonton is full of Indians who’ve just upped from the village and landed there. They don’t try at all to adjust to the Canadian way of life. You see them in pyjamas and tehmats and open beards, and all they do is open gurdwaras, create factions and fight. Naturally, they are looked down upon by the locals. I tried to explain to my daughters that neither do these people represent the real India nor are they typical Indians. I’d tell them stories about India but those seemed like fairy tales to them, for when you haven’t seen it (India), how can you relate to it?"

Charanjit migrated to the USA in 1986, when she married Harjit Singh Gill, who was already settled there. He is at present a Unix administrator in a leading software company in California. Charanjit had a lucrative job in Aerospace. The decision to migrate to India with her children was a considered one. "One of us had to quit our jobs and move here because out there neither of us could give time to our children. Also, we saw that it was only too easy for the children to become little Americans with no grounding in their own language, culture or religion, with no common meeting ground with their relatives and no feelings for their roots at all". But isn’t there an Indian community there? "Yes, but that much of cultural interchange isn’t enough. They were being torn between two worlds without really knowing why and what exactly it was that we were trying to teach them".

And there was a more immediate concern. "The violence in the schools there really scared us — the kids seem to have easy access to weapons. It was frightening to send the kids to school." Narinder Singh Gill went a step further than Chauhan and Charanjit. Not only did he shift his family to India but he relocated himself from Fort Nelson, Canada, where he had a thriving furniture and electronics store, and built himself a house and business in Mohali. "We shifted when my children were very young (1995) and before they could get caught in the cross-cultural currents…. Although their grandparents were there and spoke in Punjabi to them, the kids were not interested in learning their mother tongue and wanted to speak only in English. The other thing that bothered us was the cut-and-dried attitude of other families towards their own members — they showed very little concern for each other. We didn’t want that to happen to us."

Though in the final analysis, neither Chauhan nor Charanjit regret their decision to move to India, but Chauhan accepts that "adjusting in India after 20 years of living abroad, has been a drastic and dramatic change. Often I get frustrated and lose my temper because a simple job which should otherwise take 10 minutes, might take anything up to 10 days, maybe more, here. There’s also a great deal of waste in terms of human power. But, for my girls, the time is right now, so here we are!"

Says Narinder, "The traffic, the insecurity and the corruption here really blows your mind till you get used to it." Charanjit, too, makes similar observations, "Coming back to India is tough initially, with little medical amenities, no security and too many attitude problems everywhere. Either you should have contacts or you spend half a day standing in queues. Life is so much easier in California. You can work at home and at office without making much fuss. Here, everything really piles on."

Charanjit also regrets that she had to leave her job. "By the time I return, I don’t know if I would want to work anymore. But still I don’t mind because the children are our big investment". She felt they had made the right decision when her husband, on a visit, declared: "Now I feel I’ve achieved what I wanted for my children." Chauhan, too, sees a bright side to it, "I have so much time to spend with the kids here … out there I was so madly busy with my work and lesson plans or the computer and just got home to sleep. Here I’m more in control of the kids’ lives and also have time for myself, my painting, etc. So, it’s a good break for me after years of very hard work."

The change is definitely more drastic for the children, who hardly know what to expect on coming to India, especially at school. Says 16-year-old Jyoti Gill, "For the first three-four months, all I seemed to be doing was eating, sleeping and studying — till I got used to it. There isn’t anything much to do out here — no activities like games, soccer, swimming or even decent neighbourhood parks." Agrees Navneet Chauhan, a Class IX student in St Xavier’s, "The concept of having fun is quite different here — the birthday parties last barely half an hour. You give your gift and eat some barfi or something and go back home. Out there, birthdays lasted for maybe 6-7 hours, even more, and we’d do lots of different things! Also, wearing uniforms in school is a bit strange. Out there, we could wear anything we wanted and the lunch break in schools here is really short. There, we’d have an hour and a half off ."

More disturbing are issues like gender inequality. Says Navneet, "Girls have real low self-esteem and they’re really put down here. Things that are okay for boys aren’t so for girls."

There are certain other things that shock. "I hate the way cows and dogs get squashed on the roads. No one even bothers to stop and pick them up. The lower class people, like maids and rickshaw-pullers, get treated real bad. Poverty is the worst thing about India. Also, there’s so much garbage around. The trees have nowhere to breathe and there’s not even a patch of grass without garbage on it," exclaims Navneet.

Although education is one of the main reasons cited by these families for returning to India, they express dissatisfaction with the education system here. Finding some grey areas in schools here, Charanjit says: "The teachers are almost non-conversant with child psychology and the kids are pretty much at their mercy." Agrees Navneet, "The teachers are really strict and the children have to respect them. Out there we respected our teachers too, but it wasn’t kind of compulsory." There are also comparisons with regard to state support, which is "good abroad, whereas here the parents really have to suffer and run around for tuitions, admission, everything."

One common thing among all these families, the parents as well as the children, is that none of them are considering making India their permanent home. "Settling down here isn’t really an option for the kids at least". Though they want the children to imbibe Indian cultural values, they certainly desire a better quality of life for them than their native country can offer. Thus no one has closed their options. While Chauhan’s business and family is well established in Edmonton, Charanjit’s husband is doing well in his job and Narinder Singh Gill still holds major shares in his old store. So the doors remain wide open for them abroad."While school education is excellent here, college and university education is much better there," asserts Chauhan. Adds Charanjit, "By the time kids reach college level, most of the chaff gets separated from the grain — only the really bright kids make it to college there. About 40-50 per cent of them drop out." Says Gill, " I certainly don’t want to pay bribes to get my kids into professional courses or jobs."

Thus, there are several cross-cultural problems for the families which have returned ‘home’. While the parents’ aim is to infuse a hefty dose of tradition into their children’s growing years, they aren’t too keen on them imbibing the lessons that India presents before them — poverty, callousness, disregard for human life, apathy and corruption. In fact, after years spent on foreign soil, India has some pretty hard shocks in store for these parents.

A real eye-opener for Charanjit and her kids was the experience when Vikram sustained a fracture in school and another occasion when a bus rammed into their car, damaging it badly. The callous approach of the government hospital, the police and the civic authorities came as a shock.

However, after a few months all grouses have been put on the back-burner as these families get down to the business of living here. "After all," says Narinder, "this is India. Anything can happen here and anything can be done here."