In January my father had a heart attack.

He was at home, halfway around the world from me, and it came out of nowhere. I remember my hands shaking when I heard the news. I booked the first flight out and got home as fast as I could. And then, almost as soon as I landed, I was counting days. My company said I had to use my leave, there was no extra time to be given, and I had to be back soon. So I sat with my family, and I counted days.

That's when something in me broke a little, in a good way. I didn't like the fact that I was chained to a visa, in a country I wasn't happy in, so far away from the people I love. None of it - the job, the title, the safe path - mattered if I couldn't be around my family when it counted.

That was eight months ago. It's taken me all of those eight months to act on it.

I started asking people. Should I quit? Should I give up my H1B, come back to India, and work full time on the startup I've been building on nights and weekends? And every single person I asked said no. Don't do it. Too risky. Wait a bit. You're throwing away something people would kill for.

It took me an embarrassingly long time to notice that I was asking people who had never done what I was about to do. Of course they'd tell me not to. They wouldn't know how.

It reminds me of a friend of mine, one of my closest. He'd come over to hang out whenever we had a gig to go to, and at the time I was going through a rough patch in my relationship. He was single, and he'd written off relationships entirely - a proper non-believer in love - and he would sit there and preach to me about mine. One day I told him, "Bro, no offence, but you know why I listen to you, right?" He said, "What?" I said, "Don't take it the wrong way, but I listen to you so I know what not to do."

He was quite alarmed. But he took it in good stride, and a couple of years later he found someone, committed, and settled down. Turns out he just hadn't done it yet.

That's how I've started hearing the advice. Not as wrong, exactly. Just as coming from people who haven't taken this particular leap. Nobody I know has. That's sort of the story of my life, honestly - I keep ending up on roads where there's nobody ahead of me to ask.

So I stopped waiting for permission and started building the courage myself. I put in the work. I saved money. I made the startup real enough that leaving wouldn't be a jump into nothing. Slowly, the fear got smaller than the reason.

I want to say one more thing, because I've been thinking about the people who come back home not by choice. People who lose a visa or a job and get sent back, and feel like failures for it. I'd much rather make this decision by choice than have it made for me by circumstance. But if it was made for you, I want you to know - I'm choosing the life you were handed, on purpose, with my eyes open. It's not a consolation prize. I think it might be the best thing I ever do.

I haven't worked out every detail. I don't have a plan for everything that could go wrong. But I know where I want to be the next time my family needs me.

Home. I'm going home.