The experience has not been too pleasant as Indian society itself is divided into so many fractions by religion, region, language, caste, creed, class, income group, etc. that they themselves don't get along well among themselves and divided so so many groups and subgroups.
I have experienced so much issues between south Indians and north Indians, among Hindus and Muslims and Christians, among vegetarians and non-vegetarian eaters, among people from north east states of India and people from rest of India .... the list is too long and many are unknown to me. If you happen to look different by your skin color, look, hair color, features, language, social habits .... you feel yourself isolated unless you are able to handle the lives of yours and your family in independent way and being self dependent within yourselves. Â
It is not too easy for °µÍø½ûÇøs and their families to socialize and mix within the general Indian community unless you find people from your own countries or lucky to meet some global Indians where you live. You may not face too much or problem at the workplace but challenges are when you try to mix socially as the society has many pre-determined and fixed mindsets about good, bad, ugly about people who do not belong to their group, culture, religion, region while foreigners find it far more difficult to mingle with major part of the society, and unfortunately, in last few years this had gone bad to worse.
In India, people rent you houses based on your religion, food habits, social status and practices. Now often often you are told what should you eat, how should you dress, who should visit you and who shouldn't and so on which were not the norms a few years back.
As an °µÍø½ûÇø, you and your family face issues from food habits to procuring your preferred food as they are available in limited varieties in specific cities which you will not find across the country and not in each and every large city so your location plays a major role to your lives in India. You will find difficulties in eating out as except five star hotels you will hardly find food that has control on oil, spices and chillies which hardly most °µÍø½ûÇøs will be able to handle. In five star hotels, there are limitations in terms of varieties and prices are not something one can afford to eat too often.
Your problems will begin when your kids will ask for an authentic hamburger or a typical hotdog which you won't find even in international QSR chains like McDonald's or KFC or Burger King as their menus are absolutely different and so are the taste and service.
You have to extremely adaptive and patient if you are not in a foreign diplomatic mission and going to live in India with your family, then do not expect much and be satisfied with what you get.