Indians don’t just dream of success — we uproot our entire lives for it.
We leave behind the scent of fresh rain on Delhi roads, the chai stalls that know our order by heart, the grandparents who sneak us extra sweets when our parents aren’t looking. We say goodbye to bedrooms filled with childhood trophies, to festivals with neighbors who feel like extended family, to the comfort of hearing your name pronounced right. All in the name of “opportunity.” While others get to chase their ambitions within familiar cities, familiar languages, familiar skies — we book one-way tickets, convert our savings into dollars, and prepare to fall asleep in a place where no one knows our mother tongue or our mom’s cooking.
It’s not just migration. It’s quiet mourning. It’s bravery wrapped in visa forms and homesickness tucked into 23 kg suitcases. It’s calling your parents with a lump in your throat and telling them you’re “loving it” even though you cried in the grocery store because you couldn’t find the right kind of atta.
This isn’t just the pursuit of a dream. It’s a trade — comfort for career, closeness for credentials, and home for hope.
Beta, America jaake settle ho jao
We’ve all heard this line — “Beta, America jaake settle ho jao.”
From relatives we barely know at weddings, who ask about our GPA before asking our name. From well-meaning parents who firmly believe that success starts with a student visa and ends with a green card. And, of course, from that one random uncle who lives in New Jersey and speaks in a confused accent that’s half Hinglish, half CNN — the man treats green cards like they’re Nobel Prizes and will not rest until you “just apply yaar, what’s the harm?”
There’s something deeply programmed into the Indian psyche — a stubborn little voice that insists that real success exists “somewhere else.” That true ambition comes with snow, Subway sandwiches, and seasonal depression. It’s why every Indian airport looks like a bittersweet emotional montage: parents clinging to their kids like it’s a Karan Johar climax scene, students wheeling around bags stuffed with Maggi packets, masalas, and frozen motherly love. Somewhere between immigration and boarding, there’s always a teary FaceTime, a shaky voice promising to “call once I land,” and a mother holding back a flood of emotion behind misty glasses.
Life begins at the end of your comfort zone
Neale Donald Walsch
It’s why you’ll find software engineers in Silicon Valley with a playlist full of Arijit Singh, MBA students in Boston trying to find paneer in Whole Foods, and PhD scholars in Chicago surviving blizzards while dreaming of Biryani from Charminar. They’re out there chasing degrees, paychecks, and startup dreams — but a piece of their heart is still floating in Indiranagar or Andheri or Shimla, waiting for winter break.
And while everyone — everyone — loves talking about the “opportunity” and the “exposure” and the “better quality of life,” no one really talks about the cost.
Not the financial cost (although hello, out-of-state tuition), but the emotional tab you quietly keep paying.
The cost of leaving behind your people. Your language. Your identity, which you now must explain in every icebreaker session. The cost of not being there when your cousin gets married, when your childhood pet dies, when your father turns sixty. Of missing Holi, of watching Diwali firecrackers over WhatsApp video calls, of not remembering what real monsoons smell like.
No one prepares you for that ache — the one that sits right next to your ambition.
And yet, we go. With dreams in our eyes, curry in our luggage, and a silent prayer that the price will be worth it.
The emotional visa we never applied for
Let’s be honest — success abroad comes with baggage. And we’re not just talking about the 46kg check-in allowance bursting with Haldiram’s and an entire masala dabba. We mean the emotional kind — the kind customs won’t scan, but you carry every day.
It’s Diwali nights without diyas — just the cold blue light of your laptop as you meet another deadline. Pongal mornings with no filter coffee, no cousins yelling over the remote. Birthday calls where your grandma’s voice lags just as she sings, and you pretend not to cry.
Homesickness doesn’t show up like a drama scene. It sneaks in quietly — when you can’t find your brand of atta, when someone sprinkles turmeric on pasta, when someone says “curry” like it’s one dish. It smells like your mum’s aloo parantha that never tastes the same when you make it. It sounds like your grandma’s voice note: “Dhyaan rakhna beta. Khaana khaate rehna.”
You learn to live in Fahrenheit and “how are you today” small talk. You smile politely when someone says, “Your English is so good!” — as if you weren’t expected to speak it.
You become fluent in swallowing your loneliness between group projects and networking events. You convert rupees to dollars in your head like mental math champions. And when someone says, “You’re so lucky to be here,” you smile. Because yes — you are. But also? You’re tired.
Meanwhile, in the land of the free (and geographically blessed)
If you’re born in the U.S., your dreams come with Wi-Fi and proximity. Want to be an artist in LA? Pack a bag, move a few states. Got into a great college? Cue the Target haul. Landed a job in another city? Rent a U-Haul and bribe your friends with pizza.
No visas. No embassy lines. No sweating over DS-160 forms.
Just vibes.
But for your average Indian student, chasing a dream abroad is an emotional obstacle course. First, convince your parents. Then, the embassy. Then, the universe (and the RBI) for a student loan. Practice your “confident but not desperate” voice for the visa interview. Overthink your outfit like it’s your wedding day — all for one stamp that changes everything.
And even after you land — jetlagged, sleep-deprived, carrying a pressure cooker — you don’t exhale. That’s just Level One.
Next up: time zone math to call home. Paying rent in dollars, calculating it in rupees. Celebrating your birthday in minus 10 degrees with frozen parathas and a Zoom call that lags during the cake-cutting. Roommates who think cumin is spicy. And that ever-present ticking clock: visa expiry.
OPT, H-1B, green card lottery — you speak fluent acronym now.
Still, we do it. Again and again. With tired backs, hopeful hearts, and Google Docs full of dreams and grocery lists. Why? Because we’ve been taught that “abroad” equals achievement. That sacrificing comfort for career is noble. That success is forever — and this discomfort, temporary.
But what no one prepares you for… is limbo.
It’s just for a few yearS
That’s what we tell ourselves.
Just until the degree. Just until the H-1B gets approved. Just until we save enough to come home and build that dream house with a balcony swing for Amma.
“It’s just a few years,” we say — like it’s a bad haircut.
But a few years become ten. You’re still postponing trips home. Your parents have learned to say “beta, it’s okay” every time. Your accent’s confused, your spice tolerance is questionable, and your nostalgia hits hardest during mealtimes.
The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned
Maya Angelou
Soon, you’re raising kids who call Diwali “Indian Christmas,” pronounce your name with a twang, and think tamarind is a weird candy. They know the difference between guac and queso, but need subtitles for your favorite movies.
You miss home in strange ways — the smell of wet earth, the sound of temple bells through traffic, your mom’s rasam that no YouTube aunty can replicate. You cling to old kurtas, steel dabbas, and your uncle’s WhatsApp forwards that make zero sense but feel like love.
And somehow, in this foreign land, you start planting new roots.
You enroll your kids in Saturday Hindi classes. You celebrate Holi with colored corn starch. You try teaching your kid the meaning of seva while they ask Alexa for the weather.
It’s heartbreaking and beautiful — watching a new version of “home” being born that looks nothing like the one you left.
You realize: you’re not just an immigrant.
You’re the architect of someone else’s origin story.
Don’t get us wrong — we’re grateful
We really are. We’re grateful for the chance to build lives in places our parents only saw in movies. We’re grateful for the scholarships, the exposure, the clean air, and the fact that we get to say things like “I’ll circle back on that” with a straight face in office meetings. We know we’re lucky — lucky to have boarded that flight, to have cleared that visa interview, to have access to things many people only dream of.
But sometimes, gratitude feels like a double-edged sword. Like you’re not allowed to be homesick or tired or burnt out because “at least you’re abroad.” There’s this constant pressure to perform thankfulness — to smile through the loneliness, to take every obstacle “in stride,” to never complain because somewhere, someone back home is sacrificing so you can be here.
When you leave home, you carry it with you, and you carry it forever
Robin Williams
So we say thank you — to the bank that gave us an education loan, to the landlord who agreed to rent to “foreign students,” and to the gods who helped our luggage arrive in one piece — but quietly, we also long for comfort. For a life where we don’t have to translate ourselves all the time. For the right to be exhausted, without guilt.
It’s not just about leaving India. It’s about what India becomes once you leave.
When you live in India, it’s just… life. It’s noisy, chaotic, sweaty, beautiful life. But the minute you leave, it becomes something else — something precious and mythical and too-perfect-to-touch. Suddenly, the power cuts become quirky, the traffic becomes nostalgic, and the auto driver’s refusal to go anywhere feels like a cultural quirk, not a headache. India stops being reality and starts becoming memory. And memory has no potholes or pollution — just mom’s sabzi, dad’s jokes, cousins fighting over Ludo, and a sense of belonging that now exists mostly on FaceTime.
And the strange thing is, India doesn’t stop. It moves on without you. New buildings pop up. Family members age. Cousins get married, babies are born, WhatsApp groups change names. You’re frozen in time, still picturing your home the way you left it — the street dog near the gate, the smell of agarbatti at 7 AM, the sound of pressure cooker whistles as background music. But home evolves, even when you’re not around to see it. And when you finally go back, you realize — you didn’t just leave a place. You left a version of it that no longer exists.
So, what now?
You build. You adapt. You put down new roots even when your heart still beats in two time zones. You start celebrating Diwali with LED lights from Amazon and explain “rangoli” to your neighbors using sidewalk chalk. You keep a stash of Maggi for emergencies — not hunger emergencies, but soul emergencies. You become a walking cultural manual, always ready to explain why Holi isn’t “India’s Halloween” and why turmeric doesn’t belong in smoothies.
The beauty of immigration lies in being able to blend the old and the new, the past and the present
You find your people — the ones who understand your “yaar” and your “uff,” who don’t question your need to cry on Republic Day, who also get emotional when they smell jasmine hair oil in a foreign grocery store. You make peace with the fact that your life will always involve a little juggling — between passports and priorities, between career goals and family group calls, between who you were and who you’re becoming.
And somewhere along the way, the ache dulls a little. You stop counting the years since you left. You laugh more, cry less, and even start liking brunch. You still miss home, but you no longer feel like you’re floating. You’re grounded — just in a different soil.
And maybe that’s okay
Maybe the point was never to replace one home with another, but to learn how to carry both. Maybe it’s okay that our kids don’t speak flawless Hindi or Bengali, as long as they know where they come from. Maybe it’s okay that we celebrate festivals a day late because of time zones. Maybe it’s okay to still cry when we hear the national anthem, even if we’re hearing it through headphones on a subway train in a city that barely knows our name.
We’ve spent so much time chasing the perfect life — the successful job, the stable visa, the Instagrammable house with fairy lights and “Live Laugh Love” on the wall — that we forget how much beauty there is in the imperfect one we actually live. The one with reheated curry, glitchy video calls, and a heart that stretches across continents. We may never fully belong in one place again, but maybe that’s the point. We’re the bridge. The hyphen. The before and after.
And maybe — just maybe — that’s not a burden. Maybe that’s our superpower.
In the end, it’s not about finding some perfect balance because that doesn’t exist. You never truly stop feeling torn between two worlds. But over time, you begin to appreciate the quiet magic of living between them. You carry pieces of home wherever you go, and those things that once felt distant—like the smell of incense or a familiar song—are always just a heartbeat away.
Being an immigrant is full of contradictions. There are days when you long for the simplicity of the life you left behind—where family gatherings were full of laughter, the air smelled of spice, and every corner of your neighborhood felt like home. But then there are moments when you realize that the journey, with all its struggles, has transformed you in ways you couldn’t have imagined.
What happens when you leave is that both India and you change. You adapt, grow, and create a new life that weaves the best of both worlds. You teach your children about the festivals you celebrated, cook meals that taste like home, and bridge the distance with every call to your parents.
The homesickness doesn’t weigh you down anymore. It’s become part of who you are—something precious you carry with you, knowing that home isn’t just a place, but a feeling you create wherever you go. Maybe, just maybe, that’s okay. We don’t need all the answers. We just need to keep showing up, and in doing so, we find a version of home that’s uniquely ours.
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And if you’d like to explore more of my world, visit my corner at HCMUJ — Aditi Thakur