When we first leave India, we rarely think about how much our idea of home will change. We leave with excitement, ambition and a little sadness, believing that India will always remain exactly where we left it. We may be moving abroad for studies, a better career, business, financial opportunities or simply the desire to experience a different life. At that stage, home feels very simple. It is the house where our parents live, the neighbourhood where we grew up, the school we attended and the people who have known us since childhood. We may tell our family that we will visit often and perhaps even believe that we will eventually return.
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But life has a way of changing those plans. Five years become ten, and ten years can quietly become twenty. We build careers, get married, have children, buy homes and develop friendships in a country that once felt completely unfamiliar. The streets that were strange become familiar. We learn where to shop, where to eat, how the local systems work and how to live comfortably in a different culture. Eventually, the country we once called “abroad” becomes the place where our everyday life happens. Yet somewhere inside us, India continues to exist, not always as the country we see today, but as the India we remember.
The Question Many NRIs Eventually Ask: Where Is Home?
For many Indians living abroad, the question of home becomes more complicated with time. When we are young and newly settled abroad, we often think of India as home and our new country as the place where we are temporarily living. But after many years, our lives become deeply connected to the country where we settled. Our children may be born there, our closest friends may live there, our careers may depend on being there and our daily routines may have nothing to do with India.
At the same time, India remains connected to something much deeper. It is connected to our childhood, our parents, our grandparents, our first friendships and the experiences that shaped us before we became adults. This can create a strange feeling of belonging to two places at once. You can feel comfortable in your adopted country and still feel a powerful emotional connection to India. You can be grateful for the life you built abroad while missing the life you left behind.
Perhaps this is why the question “Where are you from?” can become surprisingly complicated for someone who has lived abroad for many years. You may answer with the name of your Indian city because that is where your story began, but then you may realise that you have spent most of your adult life somewhere else. Your passport can give you one answer, your memories another and your everyday life a third.
The India We Miss Is Often the India of Our Childhood
When an NRI says, “I miss India,” it is worth asking what exactly they miss. Very often, it is not simply the country itself. It is a particular time in their life. It is the India of childhood, when summers seemed endless, grandparents were still healthy, cousins lived nearby and family gatherings seemed to happen all the time. It is the India of school holidays, cricket in the street, railway journeys, monsoon afternoons, neighbourhood shops, family weddings and food prepared by someone who knew exactly how you liked it.
We rarely appreciate these things when we are children because we assume they will always be there. We don’t think about taking photographs of an ordinary afternoon at home. We don’t imagine that one day we might live thousands of kilometres away and desperately miss the sound of our parents talking in the next room. We don’t realise that the smell coming from our grandmother’s kitchen may one day become a memory we would give almost anything to experience again.
This is why childhood memories can become stronger after moving abroad. We are not simply remembering places; we are remembering people, emotions and a version of ourselves that no longer exists. The old neighbourhood may still be there, but we are no longer the child who used to run through it. The family home may still exist, but the people who made it feel like home may have grown older or moved away. In many ways, we are missing both India and the younger version of ourselves that belonged to it.
Why Does India Feel Different When We Go Back?
One of the most confusing experiences for a long-term NRI is returning to India and discovering that it does not feel exactly as expected. You may arrive with excitement, looking forward to familiar food, familiar language and familiar people, only to realise after a few days that many things have changed. The neighbourhood may look different, the old shop may have disappeared and friends may have moved to other cities or countries. Family members have grown older, and some people who were an important part of your childhood may no longer be there.
But India is not the only thing that has changed. You have changed too. Living abroad for many years changes your habits, expectations and perspective. You become accustomed to another way of organising daily life. You may have developed different attitudes towards work, privacy, family, education, time and personal space. When you return to India, you may recognise everything around you but still feel slightly disconnected from it.
This does not mean you have stopped being Indian. It simply means you have lived another life. The person who left India twenty years ago is not the same person who is returning today. Perhaps the hardest part is accepting that you cannot return to the India of your childhood because that India exists partly in your memory. The real India continued moving forward while you were building your life elsewhere.
The Strange Feeling of Being a Visitor in Your Own Country
There is a particular experience that many NRIs find difficult to explain. You can walk through the city where you grew up, speak the language, recognise the food and remember the roads, yet still feel like a visitor. You know the place, but you no longer live its everyday reality. You are visiting rather than participating in the ordinary life of the city.
This feeling can sometimes create guilt. An NRI may wonder, “Why don’t I feel completely at home here anymore?” The answer may simply be that home has changed. It is not necessarily one location anymore. Your new country has become part of your identity because that is where you have spent your adult years. Your children may have taken their first steps there, started school there and made their closest friends there. Your memories, however, still belong largely to India.
Instead of seeing this as a loss, perhaps it is better to see it as something that happens naturally when a person builds a life across countries. You haven’t necessarily lost your connection with India. Your definition of home has simply become bigger and more complicated.
Then Children Change the Whole Question
For NRI parents, the question of identity becomes even more interesting when children are born abroad. A parent may remember growing up in India surrounded by cousins, grandparents, neighbours and extended family, while their child may grow up in a completely different environment. The child may attend school abroad, have friends from many cultures, speak the local language most comfortably and experience India mainly through family holidays.
This can create worry among parents. They may wonder whether their children will forget India, lose the family language or become disconnected from Indian traditions. They may wonder whether their children will understand the sacrifices made by earlier generations or appreciate the culture that shaped their parents.
But there is an important thing to remember: our children cannot have our childhood. They can hear our stories, learn about our family and experience parts of our culture, but their childhood will always be their own. Expecting them to feel exactly what we feel about India may create unnecessary pressure and disappointment.
A child born abroad is not necessarily rejecting India simply because they do not have the same emotional attachment as their parents. They are experiencing India through a different lens. For the parent, India may mean childhood. For the child, it may mean grandparents, holidays, food, family stories and a country they visit occasionally. Both experiences can be genuine.
Don’t Ask Your Children to Live in Your Past
Perhaps one of the best things an NRI parent can do is to stop trying to recreate their childhood exactly for their children. Instead, share the story of that childhood. Tell them about the house where you grew up, the school you attended, the friends you had and the games you played. Tell them about your grandparents and what your family did during holidays. Show them old photographs and explain who the people are.
Tell them the funny stories too. Tell them about getting into trouble at school, missing a bus or train, fighting with cousins, breaking something at home or being afraid of a particular teacher. These ordinary details are often more interesting to children than a long lecture about culture.
Children don’t necessarily connect with a country because they are told that they should. They connect with people and stories. If India becomes connected with the stories of their parents, the voices of their grandparents, family recipes and meaningful experiences, it can become part of their identity naturally.
The Language Problem for Indian Families Abroad
Language can be one of the most emotional subjects for NRI parents. A mother or father may naturally speak Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Bengali, Punjabi, Gujarati, Marathi, Kannada or another Indian language, while their child responds mostly in the language used at school and with friends.
Parents can sometimes interpret this as a rejection of their culture. But for the child, it may simply be the language that feels easiest in everyday life. They may understand the family language perfectly well but feel less confident speaking it. They may know certain words because they have heard them repeatedly at home without being able to hold a long conversation.
Instead of making language a source of constant arguments, families can allow it to remain part of everyday life. Speak naturally at home, let grandparents use their language, tell stories and share jokes. Cook together and use familiar words while doing it. Watch family-friendly stories or programmes in the language when appropriate. Even if children never become completely fluent, they may still develop an emotional connection to the language.
A heritage language is not only a school subject. It carries the voices of grandparents, family jokes, expressions and memories. Sometimes one familiar word heard many years later can bring back an entire childhood.
Grandparents Are Often the Bridge Between Generations
For families living abroad, grandparents can become one of the most important connections between children and India. A child may live in another country but still have a strong emotional relationship with grandparents through regular calls and visits. Technology makes communication much easier than it was for previous generations, but a video call can never completely replace sitting together in the same room.
That is why visits to India can be so meaningful. Parents sometimes feel they need to organise a huge number of activities during a trip, but children may remember the simplest moments. Sitting with Grandma in the kitchen, listening to Grandpa tell the same story for the third time, playing with cousins or looking through old photographs can become much more important than visiting another tourist attraction.
The older we become, the more we understand the value of ordinary family moments. A child may not realise it during the visit, but years later, a photograph or a familiar recipe may suddenly bring back memories of a grandparent who is no longer there.
What Happens When Parents in India Grow Older?
This is perhaps one of the hardest realities of living abroad. When we are young, distance feels manageable. We can visit India once a year, make phone calls and stay connected through technology. But as our parents grow older, the kilometres between us begin to feel different.
Questions that once seemed far away suddenly become important. Should we spend more time in India? Should our parents move closer to us? Would they be comfortable living abroad? Should we eventually return to India? What about our children’s education, our careers, our homes and the life we have already built?
There is no simple answer because every family has different circumstances. Some parents are happy remaining in India, while others may want to spend more time with their children and grandchildren abroad. Some NRI families eventually divide their time between countries. Others make a permanent decision to move.
The important thing is to have these conversations before a crisis forces the family to make decisions quickly. Living abroad gives families opportunities, but it can also create responsibilities that require planning, especially when parents grow older.
Should NRIs Move Back to India?
At some point, many NRIs ask whether they should return to India permanently. Sometimes the question comes from nostalgia. Sometimes it comes because parents are ageing. Sometimes children are older and the family starts thinking about where they want to spend the next stage of their lives.
There are successful stories of people who return to India and love it. There are also people who return and later decide that living abroad suited them better. Neither experience is automatically right or wrong.
The biggest mistake is making such a decision based only on memories. The India you remember from childhood is not necessarily the India you will experience as an adult with children, professional responsibilities and a different lifestyle. Similarly, the country where you currently live will continue to change.
A decision to return should consider family, career, education, finances, lifestyle, healthcare and long-term plans. Most importantly, it should be a decision made by the family rather than something imposed by relatives or social expectations.
Are NRI Children Still Indian?
This question has no single answer because identity is personal. A child born abroad may consider themselves Indian, partly Indian, Indian and another nationality, or simply identify primarily with the country where they grew up. Their feelings may also change over time.
What matters is that children are given the freedom to understand their identity without being made to feel that they are failing their parents. They should know their family’s history and understand where their parents and grandparents came from, but they should also be allowed to create their own relationship with that heritage.
A child does not have to behave exactly like their parents to respect their family history. They can grow up abroad, speak another language, have friends from many backgrounds and still feel proud of their Indian roots. Identity is not a mathematics problem where everything has to add up to one nationality.
Maybe We Should Stop Trying to Preserve Culture Exactly as It Was
Culture changes every generation. The India that our parents knew was different from the India we grew up in, and the India our children experience will be different again. This is not necessarily a bad thing.
An Indian family living in France may celebrate Diwali differently from a family living in Delhi. An Indian family in Canada may have different weekend routines from relatives in Mumbai. A child growing up in Australia may experience Indian food, language and traditions differently from a child growing up in Hyderabad.
That does not automatically mean one family is more Indian than another.
Perhaps the goal should not be to preserve everything exactly as it was. Instead, we should preserve the parts that carry genuine meaning. Family stories, recipes, relationships, festivals, language and memories can all be adapted to a new generation.
Culture survives when people understand why something matters, not simply because they are told they must continue doing it.
The India We Give Our Children Will Not Be the India We Knew
This can be difficult for parents to accept, but it can also be beautiful. Your children may never experience the India you knew as a child. They may never play in the same street, attend the same school or spend every summer with cousins. They may not understand why a particular neighbourhood is so important to you.
But they can create their own memories.
Perhaps their India will be the summer holidays spent with grandparents. Perhaps it will be a family wedding where they met relatives they had only heard about. Perhaps it will be the taste of a particular dish their mother made. Perhaps it will be a childhood photograph of them sitting beside their grandfather.
One day, they may look back and feel nostalgic about an India that was never exactly the same India their parents knew.
And that is perfectly fine.
Every generation creates its own memories.
The Things We Thought Were Ordinary Become Precious
When we are young, we rarely understand how valuable ordinary moments are. We don’t realise that a family dinner, a walk with a parent, a visit to a grandparent or an afternoon spent playing with cousins might one day become a treasured memory.
Migration makes us notice this in a different way.
When you live far away, small memories can become incredibly powerful. You might remember the sound of your mother’s voice from the kitchen, the way your father used to call you home, the smell of your grandmother’s cooking or the particular route you took to school.
None of these things seemed extraordinary at the time.
Distance gave them meaning.
Perhaps this is why so many NRIs become more interested in old photographs and family stories as they get older. They begin to understand that these aren’t simply pictures of the past. They are pieces of a life that cannot be recreated.
Is It Possible to Belong to Two Countries?
Yes, although it may not always feel simple. You can love the country where you live while maintaining a strong connection to India. You can appreciate the opportunities and lifestyle you have abroad while still feeling emotional about the country where you grew up.
You do not have to choose one culture and reject the other.
Your children can celebrate Indian festivals and also participate fully in the culture of the country where they were raised. They can learn about their grandparents while developing friendships and traditions of their own.
Perhaps living between cultures teaches us something important: identity does not always need a single definition. A person’s life can contain different languages, countries, traditions and experiences without one cancelling out another.
Maybe Home Is Not a Place Anymore
After many years abroad, perhaps we ask the wrong question when we ask, “Where is home?”
Home might be the house where you grew up, but it can also be the house where your children are growing up. It can be your parents’ kitchen, your grandmother’s recipe, an old photograph or a friend you have known since school.
Sometimes home is a smell that brings back a forgotten afternoon. Sometimes it is a song that makes you remember a person who has been gone for years. Sometimes it is sitting at an airport waiting for a flight to India and feeling excited, even though you know that the India you are returning to is not exactly the one you left.
Maybe home is not one geographical location.
Maybe home is the collection of people, memories and experiences that shaped us.
What Should NRI Parents Pass on to Their Children?
Perhaps we should stop worrying about passing down everything and concentrate on passing down what matters. Tell your children where you came from. Explain your family history. Introduce them to relatives and grandparents. Share recipes and photographs. Tell them stories about your childhood and explain why certain traditions are meaningful to you.
Most importantly, don’t make them feel that they have to choose between their present and their heritage. Their life is different from yours because the world has changed. That doesn’t mean they are forgetting where they came from.
Give them roots, but give them freedom too.
They don’t have to recreate your childhood. They only need to understand the story that came before theirs.
One Day, They May Understand
Perhaps your children don’t understand your nostalgia today. They may not understand why you want to visit a particular street in India or why an old song suddenly makes you quiet. They may not understand why you keep photographs of relatives they barely remember.
But one day they may.
Perhaps they will become parents themselves. Perhaps they will move away from the place where they grew up. Perhaps they will hear a song from their childhood or smell a food that reminds them of home. At that moment, they may finally understand why their parents always talked about India with such emotion.
They may realise that when you were talking about India, you were not simply talking about a country. You were talking about your childhood, your parents, your grandparents, your friends and a version of yourself that existed before adulthood changed everything.
We Leave India, But We Carry a Part of It With Us
Perhaps this is the real NRI story. We leave India physically, but we don’t necessarily leave everything behind. We carry our memories, our family stories, our food, our language, our childhood experiences and the people who shaped us.
We then pass some of those things to our children. They may not receive them in exactly the same form, and they may not feel about them exactly as we do. That is part of how families and cultures evolve.
We don’t have to choose between India and the country where we live. We can appreciate our present while remembering our past. We can raise our children abroad while teaching them about their grandparents. We can return to India without expecting it to remain frozen in our childhood memories.
Perhaps home is not a country at all.
Perhaps home is the part of our life that continues to travel with us.
For an NRI, that may be the greatest truth of all: we may leave India, but the India that shaped us does not necessarily leave us.
And maybe that is why, after twenty or thirty years abroad, a familiar smell, an old photograph, a childhood song or a simple conversation with our parents can still take us back in an instant.