Return To India

So I moved back to India after five years in the US. After a lot of deliberation I decided that for my personal life and career India is the better option. Yes thats the truth.

Getting back to life on the India’s roads has been somewhat amusing. So the other day I was driving my car and I saw this person lets call him RakeshJi trying to cross the road on a zebra crossing while I was turning onto the road. Now its very ingrained in me that I will stop and let him cross. But Rakeshji gave me this confused look and he has no idea why I am stopping in the middle of the road. So he decides to walk towards my car, give me a very puzzled look and then walk around my car. And while this is happening everyone behind me is honking. One guy on a two wheeler even came next to my window and asked, “Bro are you sleeping?”. Noone in that 5 mile radius thought I was sane.

Something similar happened the other day when I was going to Deccan gymkhana. The road has no sidewalk and so the pedestrians were walking on the road, I mean where else would they walk right? So I started driving on pedestrian speed and then everyone behind me just started honking. And I am like either the pedestrians need to get wings and disappear from the road or we reach a few minutes late if we want to use this road. I sense not many people agree with me on the latter option. It would be kinda cool if pedestrians start carrying around tiny horns in their hands so that they can honk back. Because without that it sounds like a pretty unequal battle. Let the honk battle begin!

Now consider this intersection that I encounter everyday on my way home from work. There are no signals at this intersection so its largely an intersection left to be overseen by Gods. Theres always a traffic jam at this intersection. So I found myself asking why we dont why Stop signs in India which work so beautifully in the US. For those of you who dont know what Stop signs are, they mean stop at intersection and allow whoever reached first to go first and if everyone follows that traffic flows like water. Until one day I saw that, this intersection did indeed have a stop sign. But only facing one direction. What is the point of a stop sign which only tells one side of the intersection to stop for others but everyone else have no rules. So the stop sign is mostly for aesthetics. Because aesthetics are important. Because a road should look like road right. So lets put up some signs and mark some lanes and then we’ll forget about them.

The other day I was going to work in the morning and there was this guy on a floating sofa coming towards me really fast. So I slowed down then he came closer and I saw the faint outline of a two wheeler on the couch. Then he came even closer and it was actually a whole three seater sofa on a two wheeler. Whoever said you need a UHaul truck to transport a sofa? You just need a two wheeler.

And then has anyone seen the BMW or Mercedes Benz auto rickshaws? With those big logos at the back? Its really cool to see the big automotive companies leaving F1 and entering the rickshaw market. They have finally realised how lucrative and on brand the rickshaw market can be in India.

Recently I also had to go to Mumbai late at night to catch a flight to my friends wedding and the highway traffic was another beast. So the fastest lane had the slowest cars. Think a truck or a dumper. Some trucks have blow horn written at the back, some trucks have horn not okay please and sometimes both are written right next to each other. Then there was also a bus swerving through the traffic increasing everyones anxiety. Then a truck with no lights at the back so it was almost invisible until you got real close to it and realised it had lights on the sides but not on the back.

To add to all this it was raining very heavily so everyone had hazard lights on. So since the turn indicators were out of action you were playing the guessing game of whos going to turn and when. Okay fine still doable since you were being extra extra careful. Then in all this, a red inter state bus in front of us who did not have the hazard lights on, turned right with the left indicator. Okay so apart from the turning guessing game, theres also a turning lying game also going on. If this was a video game it would be the advanced extra hard legendary boss level.

After moving back I decided to live independently instead of crashing with my parents, so I started looking for houses. It was really funny to see my dad explain it to his friends about this. He went something like “Neel wants to contemplate so he will stay away only for one year”. I wasnt sure if I should laugh or cry?

So I got introduced to a broker through my friend and he asked me, “What are your requirements?”. I was like I want an apartment with a dishwasher. He said, “Yeah we have dishwashers, they are called maids / mavshi”. Then I said, “No, no I want an automated dishwasher like a washing machine that I can use myself”. He said, “Next requirement?”

I told him, “I want a house close to the grocery store”. He said, “Why? Just use an app for groceries or just tell the mavshi dont get anything oily, which vegetables you dont like and she will pick it up from the grocery store.” So basically getting a mavshi is a lot like getting a Claude code or ChatGPT subscription. If you let go of a little control and prompt it the right way, prompts go in and food comes out.