It’s like someone up there has decided I do not deserve to go to India. Yet he/she keeps dangling the carrot in front of me. And the fool that I am, I keep falling for the same old trick.
In the past 1.5 years, I have had multiple opportunities through my company to take on a great assignment in our office in Bombay. The first time it was mentioned, I jumped at the idea. It was a very interesting assignment, and a great growth opportunity for me. We were working and living in Europe then and not in any real hurry to get back to the US. A few years in India as an expat sounded perfect. Moreover, the office was in Parel, a mere 20 min from my parents’ house. Plans were made, and lots of dreams were built in the air. Then we had a chat with our immigration lawyer and discovered that we couldn’t move to India directly from Europe. That was the first hurdle. We moved back to the US, started all the right immigration formalities and at one point it even looked like things were progressing very fast. But then, the next stumbling block appeared. Since then it’s been one successive hurdle after another. After months of deliberation, we finally decided to put some of the immigration procedures on hold and to take the assignment in India. My company still wanted me there and it seemed like it would be silly not to go given the great role I would have, and the opportunity to be close to family. So last week, we finally decided to sign the contract and guess what? HG gets a call from the company he has wanted to work for some time now, asking him if he is interested in this cool position they now have open! It’s a job he had applied for nearly 6 months ago and had forgotten about it. And then, they call exactly on the week that we decide to go ahead with the India assignment. Of course, HG went for the interview thinking he was not going to get the job. And of course he got the job.
So, now we have the difficult task of figuring out whether we should stay back and let HG have the opportunity of a lifetime but have me continue in my sucky job, or pursue an opportunity of a lifetime for me but have HG deal with job uncertainty there. I know this is not the absolute worse situation to be in, we only have to choose between two good options. But that’s hard too. We are leaning towards staying in the US because I already had my break when we went to Europe and now it is his turn. And I am definitely very happy for HG. But there is a part of me that is very, very sad. Living in the US was never my life’s dream and the longer I spend away from my family the more certain I become about going back. HG was looking forward to going to India but he would have had to deal with the Indian style of working, and he was a bit apprehensive about that (he left after college and has never worked there.) Plus it’s always scary to move to a country without a job. But it wasn’t just any country; it was our country and we knew that whatever happened, we would have loving family close by and things would be alright. But obviously the time for that has not yet come. We must endure this country for some more time.
1 Comment
October 15, 2007 at 5:27 pm
What a dilemma! Living away from India is also not my life’s dream…
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