It is a good idea to shift out of Metros

I am born and brought up in Mulund a good residential suburb of Mumbai. With all grace, I got all my jobs in and around the suburb. I joined and graduated as a partner with a CA firm in Vidyavihar near Ghatkopar. 

Somewhere in the corner of my mind, I loved countryside villages a lot. When being asked as a child, I used to say "I shall become a Farmer". This instinct was subtly there till I got married with Archana whose father used to stay in Roha a Taluka place in Raigad district of Maharashtra. This was just 120kms from my place Mulund. Roha is a serene town in a valley on the banks of Kundalika river, surrounded by mountains.

I like this place a lot. It synced to my interest. I became a regular visitor to Roha. We make it a point to ride around this place on two wheelers and visit Murud, Revdanada and so on. Driving on the small road climbing the hill called Hanuman Tekri is my favourite pastime. In rainy season, we make it a point to visit the nearby waterfalls in "Wile" towards Munshi on the Pune Road. It appears foggy and misty in likes of the beautiful southern getaway Kodaikanal. Believe it's is much more fun than what we may get from fashionable hill station or a lifestyle foreign trip. 

My father in law used to keep on suggesting me to set up an office in Roha. He helped me connect with a few clients in Roha as well. While working for small clients around I realised that there is much of a need for a professional help about consulting, taxation, accounting and audit in this area. Also there is a reasonably big MIDC which has close to 40 good manufacturing companies in Dhatav near Roha. There is also a contractor ecosystem serving these companies on various counts. So my firm agreed to setup a branch in Roha in the year 2012. We setup an office in a flat with basic infrastructure. I started coming to Roha for work as well on a regular basis. 

Our Chartered Accountancy firm established a full fledged branch office at Roha in 2012. We gradually started getting a few clients in and around Roha who seeked expert consultancy in Roha instead of going to Mumbai or Panvel to meet a CA. 

Many times a thought used to strike my mind "isn't it a good idea to come and settle down in this small town". Will I loose or gain if I switch out of a dream metro destination like Mumbai to a small town? What will happen to my professional practice? On the other side, there are many cases wherein people shifted out of Roha in the name of education and business to Mumbai or Pune. 

Incidentally we had a few freedoms like my daughter being homeschooled and myself practicing as partner. Believe me, we ourselves are creating a vicious circle for ourselves. It's like spider confusing himself into his own web. The self laid web of schooling, high EMI loans, friends, looking trendy and so on doesn't allow one to disentangle once own self to freedom. 

For example, Lives of many are over repaying the home loans for a dream home. One cannot give up secured pay jobs for the sake of EMI. This makes one tied to the metros tighter and doesn't allow one to liberate to a much desired piece full destination. Ultimately what one has is a comfortable home which was possible much easily and earlier "in a small town". 

Being present to these sort of thoughts bashing on translucent walls of mind, we decided to do one more experiment with life. Or in Gandhi his word "Expriment with Truth". We shifted to Roha. 

Some experience sharing pointers about our hands on experience of spending time at Roha. 

1. Commute time to office came down to ten minutes from 1 hour. This saves daily two hours of quality time. I can start work right at 8:30am. This means focussed two hours in the initial part of the day. Lot of core work getting over before calls and mails start flooding the mind. This also Concluding the work by 5:30pm is possible. 
2. Most of the meetings have moved from physical to calls. Skype calls have replaced face to face discussions. This really saves a lot of time as one cannot use traffic as an excuse for being late on the calls ;-) Once in a while visit plan to the city actually makes it efficient as I have a target to travel back on the same day. 
3. Added creativity to work and life. One the work side designing better execution and development strategies for our firm. Also carving out time to read more with regards to strategy and IT being my favourite subjects. I am being able to develop a better and clearer overview on direction of our progress. One can chase one's hobies. I am planning to pursue Samskrit, cycling and tabla after a long drenching gap. 
4. More natural life with mountains all around. Strawls on and around hills, beaches and valleys over the weekends instead of malls and highways are really refreshing. Occasional bathing opportunity in river Kundalika only 100 meters away from our building. 
5. More time with the family. Closer discussions with wife really helps allign the life goals which are very important to achieve harmony. Planning to teach my daughter Maitri somethings long planned like the meaning of Bhagwadgeeta. Hosting most of close family members, friends, relatives overnight to our bigger home resulting in further nearness to them even if we are far away as compared to what we were before.  

In my view, it was slowly become trendy to consider staying out from the metros. As the mediocres will crave for an urban lifestyle, there shall be a breed of matured who would start planning to move out of the metros cities to such small places. While deciding about investments in projects near Khopoli and Panvel, even large building construction firms like Hiranandani, Marathon, Lodha, etc seem to have picked up this subtle trend. 

This blog is to answer the questions like "Why did we shift to Roha?" It would also help to justify one's plan "Is it a good idea to shift out from a Metro city?" 

I plan to keep updating this blog with all other angles of this experiment as and when there is some realisation worth covering.