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For decades, India’s metropolitan cities — Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru — embodied aspiration. They promised opportunities, energy, and access to networks that smaller towns couldn't match. But as metro prices climb to historic highs and the dream of home ownership becomes elusive, a new pattern is emerging. Millennials without legacy wealth are increasingly recalibrating their lives, exchanging metros for smaller cities like Indore, Coimbatore, Surat, Jaipur, Kochi, Nashik, and Chandigarh.
These moves are deeply personal, reflecting choices about family, health, and community. They highlight an important tension: while many Indians are compelled to remain tethered to metros due to financial constraints, those who can leave are exercising a particular form of privilege — one that grants them cleaner air, shorter commutes, and a semblance of rootedness.
Chef Thomas Zacharias, who spent 15 years in Mumbai, describes the slow attrition of urban life: “The noise, pollution, traffic, and chaos have started wearing me down.” His decision to return to Kochi was motivated as much by personal ties as by lifestyle. “After 22 years away from home, it feels important to spend the next several years with my parents as they grow older.” For Zacharias, the move is a chance to reshape what home and community mean while maintaining professional ties through travel and remote work.
Similar impulses echo in others we spoke to. Madhuwanti, who left Bengaluru for Kochi, described the shift as a deliberate choice for “less pollution & ease of movement". Dhavalya Sagar, who moved from Chennai to Tenkasi, put it more emphatically: “True luxury is clean air, clean food, clean water.” Smaller cities are about a different kind of living.
A pattern in the people we spoke to was the rising rents and unattainable cost of living in metros. Bhumika Jeswani moved from Gurgaon and Bangalore to Bhopal. She explained that years of renting made her realise “the solace and reduced cost of living” outside metros offered more stability. Sagar said she was already planning to buy a home in her new city, something unimaginable in Chennai.
The moves are transforming routines and well-being. Respondents report more energy, time, and connection. A Tenkasi-based former metro dweller wrote: “My energy levels are off the charts. I wake up excited. People are a lot more involved in community activities.” In Bhopal, another reflected on how the change freed them from constant stress: “My lifestyle has been better, I have more time to myself.”
Yet these gains come with trade-offs. Zacharias acknowledged the difficulty of leaving behind “the networks and friendships” he built over 15 years in Mumbai, even as he resolved to keep returning. One Kochi mover described feeling the sting of homogeneity in their new city: “I hate that I am in a more homogeneous city, where I don’t find the diversity I had in Bengaluru.” These reminders complicate the narrative of escape, underscoring that smaller cities, too, have their limitations.
We need an alternate imagination of urban life in India — one where aspiration goes beyond high-rise apartments to clean air and meaningful community. At the same time, these moves shouldn't be romanticised. They highlight the structural inequalities that allow only some to exercise choice, while others remain bound by necessity. The conversation about India’s cities must go beyond individual lifestyle decisions and toward the broader question of how to make all urban spaces — metros and non-metros alike — more liveable, affordable, and inclusive.
As a born and bred Mumbaikar, I always thought the city’s chaos was part of my DNA. I could never imagine living anywhere else. My parents spent their entire childhood trying to get out of Chandigarh so they could build a life in Mumbai, and I grew up thinking that was the natural trajectory. But after listening to these stories, I’m not so sure anymore. The very cities my parents ran from might just be the ones that finally teach me what “quality of life” actually means.
