The first 24 hours

Got home by about 3AM. I was tired since I had slept only for an hour on the flight.

I still cannot believe that I have returned to India for good. The feeling is just not sunk in. Feels like a vacation from which I will return in a few days. It will take time. The last time I felt hard to accept something was after my marriage. It took a while for it to sink in that Dipti and I were married though we were living together. Guess this will be similar. It will take time to accept this.

I had made a list on the flight of things that I need to do in the next 10 days before I start work. Things I made some progress on today

· Rhea’s school admission. Need to go and talk at the schools where we are interested. Dipti will be leading this and I will follow along.

· Change bank account from NRE to savings. Turns out that I cannot change my ICICI NRE account to saving designation. I will have to close my NRE account and get a DD with the amount in it, open a new savings account and deposit the DD into it. Sounded silly to me but I’ve dealt with worse. Haven’t done this since I have a transfer pending into the NRE account. Got 5-star treatment at the branch after I told them that I wanted to find out about some of their other investment services etc also.

Random things:

· I realized that the crystalline sugar here tastes so much different than the powdered sugar in the US. No idea why the thought stuck with me.

· The highway outside our apartment complex gets a big thumbs up. The traffic is still there, but the encroachments have been cleaned and there is now a footpath (I almost wrote sidewalk) there.

· The ICICI branch I went to was near Chembur station. I have forgotten almost everything about the area. And this was a place we spent a fair bit of time when in college.