Growing Old in America

As a 41-year-old, he arrived with his wife on an immigrant visa, which his brother-in-law had applied for him years earlier. Aware of the struggle that lay ahead, the couple made the hard decision of initially leaving behind their four young kids in the care of their grandparents in Vadodara, Gujarat. Many years, many odd jobs, multiple shift duties and pittance for pay later, he was able to crack the civil services exam and bagged a job at the New York Transit Authority, where he worked for 25 long years.

But three years ago, when he retired from his job as train service supervisor, Parmar began experiencing an unfamiliar loneliness. He says: “During my long career, I made many social contacts with Americans and people across nationalities, but post-retirement I longed to interact with people my age that shared the same experiences and values. Americans are a fantastic bunch of people, but unlike your Indian friends you cannot just call them to chat or drop in to your neighbor’s house.”

 Around this time, Parmar discovered India Home, a senior center in New York City, providing social, recreational and spiritual services for South Asian seniors. Today he spends a lot of his free time at the center connecting with other visitors. He says: “I drive on my own and by virtue of living so long in New York, I am well-versed with the functionalities of the city.

I am always available for any fellow senior citizen if they want to do a bank run or have to go to a hospital. But more than anything else, we want to be there for each other to share joys and festivals and lend a shoulder to cry upon when nostalgia or memories haunt us. Something, perhaps our American colleagues or neighbors may have reservations doing.”

Parmar sums up the emotions felt by a many South Asian senior citizens in America, who after having spent many years fitting into an alien culture and learning its nuances, want to slip into the ease of their comfort zone in their retirement year.

Things are beginning to change as new providers emerge to provide culturally customized solutions and communities for South Asians. The earliest retirement community for Indians in America emerged in 2015, when Shanti Niketan opened in Tavares, Florida. However, senior social facilities, such as India Home in New York, have been operational since 2007. Retirement facilities aimed at Indian Americans are now mushrooming all over the country.

 Indian Americans are relatively better acclimatized than other minorities with higher personal income and better understanding of English. So what is the need for centers catering to the community?

 Arun Paul, founder, Priya Living in Santa Clara, Calif., says: “It’s a misconception that only the elders feel alienated. The truth is that despite all our well assimilated lives in America, even the immigrant young feel the pinch of being uprooted and crave for cultural connections.

However, toward the golden age the need to be with the ones you better relate to becomes acute as often children leave homes and start their lives, leaving the old idling away in front of TV all day.”

Meera Venugopal, development manager at India Home, which runs four centers for South Asian seniors in New York, says: “There are mainly two categories of Indian seniors in America — those who came during the 1960s and 1970s, worked their way up in the American economy and are now retired and the others who came to the country at an older age to be with their children settled in the U.S. While the former are more competent in leading a life in America than the latter, who are more likely to have language barriers and difficulty in transportation, the common feeling that both share is that of isolation.”

Usha Mehta: “Americans are a private lot; they do not want to be disturbed and are happy living all by themselves. On the contrary Indians are contagiously sociable, they want to share life’s experiences with each other.”

It is a sentiment that long-resident Indian Americans can relate with. 38-year old Sunnyside, NY, resident Usha Mehta came to the United States with her husband and daughter 30 years ago. She held a managerial position in a company and believes that coming to the United States has been great for her family. But she acknowledges that the communal warmth that India offers cannot be replicated: “I am a cancer survivor and I owe it to the extraordinary medical advancements in this country that I was able to recover. America also helped us shape our daughter’s career. It is a wonderful place, but I cannot overlook the fact that there are glaring differences in Indian and American ways of life.” Elaborating on her experiences, she says: “Americans are a private lot; they do not want to be disturbed and are happy living all by themselves. On the contrary Indians are contagiously sociable, they want to share life’s experiences with each other.”

On a more practical note she says: “Elder homes are important because sometimes the seniors don’t even know how to call emergency numbers. Sadly even after spending a lifetime here, I would not necessarily expect someone on the road to help me.”

One constraint, according to many Indian American elders, is senior centers usually require Medicaid to avail their facilities. Usha Shah says: “I generally avoid going to such centers as I don’t have Medicaid.”

SOCIAL STIGMAS

In a culture where it is mandated that children take care of their aged parents, isn’t leaving for old age retirement homes seen as an affront to family ties? Arun Paul admits that when Priya Living launched, they recognized this as a potential problem. However, he says, the old system in which parents were expected to stay close with children at the expense of their own life, needs to be challenged on many counts: “The traditional system was based on the assumption that the woman stays home to take care of elderly. As the role of women changed across the globe, the elders were left alone at home. Also, in families often the parents are reduced to be the babysitters, and especially in Western countries where house help is scant, it is doubly unfair to have elders take responsibility of the chores, such as laundry and cooking. It’s the children who deny their parents a chance to live an individual life who should be the ones called out instead.”

Usha Shah clarifies: “It’s wrong to assume that elders are visiting the centers because their children are not taking care of them. On the contrary, unlike Americans, most Indian seniors I have met continue living with their children or very close to their children.”

Mahesh Nihlani says while many Indian Americans struggle with the conviction that they owe an obligation to have parents live with them, the practice is changing in India. There, even if parents don’t go to dedicated facilities, many maintain individual households.

Relating his own experience, Nihlani says: “I came here in 1994 and both my wife and I were clear that once our boys grow up and we retire we will shift to India. However when I saw a similar set up like India in Bay Area itself I chose to stay back.”

Indian seniors participate in activities at Priya Living, an Indian American senior center in Santa Clara, Calif.

Indian American retirement communities claim to give seniors a chance to live wholesome lives. Anand Patel, director of sales at Anand Vihar, an upcoming desi retirement facility in Tampa Bay, Florida, says: “The idea is to provide a place for older residents to share like-minded experiences. The stress-free idea of not having to spend time cooking hot vegetarian meals daily is also very appealing. This provides our residents with more time to enjoy life with fellow active adults.”

Many of these retirement communities offer culturally appropriate facilities, such as vegetarian meals, Ayurveda classes, prayer rooms and festive celebrations.

On the societal bias toward elders joining a retirement center, Venugopal says: “The negative perceptions exist more in India. Those of us who have lived here are totally okay with the idea as we understand it’s the need of the community.”

Dr Kiran Dave, one of the founding members of India Home, says, “People have also realized the absolute necessity of dedicated centers.” She cites her own example: “My mother was a scientist, but in her old age she suffered from Alzheimer’s dementia. I put her in a nursing home, but she was not happy, as it was not culturally sensitive. My mother, a woman who was fluent in English, yearned to talk to someone in her native language.

“Besides her treatment required major finances, which we could afford as we were physicians, but that made me realize how important are such centers for aging and that was the motivation behind India Home.”

To cater to the medical needs of the aging Indian community, My Indian Nursing Home (MINH), a nursing program that operates in eight centers in New York and New Jersey, provides Indian patients a dedicated environment, with Indian doctors and nurses, Indian food and publications and a chance to recuperate in a totally Indian atmosphere. Jay Thakar, director of operations at MINH, says: “My dad, who has been a physician, observed that Indian patients did not feel at home in American hospital setups. They had difficulty communicating; they couldn’t eat the food provided and could not even effectively express their concerns. He thought of giving them a familiar setup. We also provide rehab services for recuperating patients and the fact that many patients voluntarily choose to overstay their rehab periods as they felt so much at ease in the environment is proof that the elderly require a socially approachable setup while living in America.”

Venugopal concedes a small proportion of elders come to the centers as they don’t have family support, but the vast majority, she says, do so for kinship and cultural association with others elders.

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 CHALLENGES