1821 days back, in 2017 I took a major decision.

After four long happy years in the Silicon Valley of India, I decided to move back to my hometown Gwalior.

I was born and raised in Gwalior, my ancestors had moved here in the 1960s after the chaos of partition. And finally, we chose this city – the heart of India. I am the fourth generation living here.

I loved my time in Bengaluru, in my experience, the city has been more welcoming than the whole of Northern India. I felt the same way while backpacking across Kerala and parts of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.

And I guess quite a lot of us feel this love towards Southern India and especially the cities, the population of metro cities has been projected by researchers to hit more than thirty million in coming years.

This crazy increase in migration towards metro cities has led to lot of problems, here are a few of them that I personally experienced:

• Hours and hours of Traffic

It used to take me anywhere between sixty to ninety minutes to reach my workplace. And it was draining, to spend that amount of time twice a day just on commute and well as a fresher, all I could afford was shared ubers and olas which had it’s own struggles too.

Usually, a shared cab would add ten-twenty minutes to the commute time.

• High Cost of Living

There are many like me now, choosing to stay back in tier 2 cities – I have two of my friends who have just joined the white-collar workforce with the work-from-home apparatus. Both of them are working for companies based in metro cities and have chosen to stay back because comparatively the cost of living is super high in cities.

And this high cost is not just for the employees, the rentals for company offices are a burn too which many corporates are trying to avoid wherever they can.

For employees, while the cost of living in cities has increased multi-fold, the income has not.

• Trouble during Monsoons

The videos that we saw this year of Bengaluru, I experienced that in 2017 too. Our office was flooded and there was no way to enter the premises.

Hundreds of us had to then go to the other office.

Here is why I enjoy living in Gwalior:

• I get to spend more time with family
• I have had more time to work on building Amrutam and also on my hobbies
• I like the slow pace of life here – the rush is not to be a unicorn but often to live healthily here

Where do you live? Metro & Non-Metro?