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Re­creating home
Sarita Sarvate • Published on July 1, 2015
“Inside” is the Indian­American retirement community of Shantiniketan in Tavares,
Florida, where Pancholi has been living with his wife Usha for the last two years.
“Women adjust better to this place; they don’t have to cook any more,” he adds. “Men
have a hard time. They have to find their niche.” Pancholi has found his niche. He volunteers at a local hospital. “There is a great need
to help people,” he says. “Not only at Shantiniketan but also in the town.” Florida, after
all, is the retirement capital of America. People need transportation to medical
facilities; they need help in so many different ways. And Pancholi feels fulfilled when
he is helping others. “I am an A­type personality,” he says. “I need something to
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occupy me.” After a successful career in sales and marketing in Ohio, where he lived in a 4,000­
5,000 sq. ft. suburban home, it is a challenge to adjust to a 1,000 sq. ft. condo in a
retirement community. But the choice for him and his wife was to move close to their
daughter in New Jersey, go to India, or come to Shantiniketan. And after forty years in
America, they knew they could not adapt to life in their native land. Like many Indians of their generation, the Pancholis are modern people. They were
among the first wave of Indian immigrants, many of whom came to the US as students
and later acquired green cards. They were the first generation to also reject the
traditional lifestyles of their parents and grandparents, with the result that they do not
expect to live with their children; they value their independence too fiercely.
When I embarked on this project to explore Indian­American retirement communities,
my visions of such places were derived from stories about nursing homes I had read in
the newspapers when I first came to the US in the ‘70s. I was imagining the neglect,
the isolation, the abuse; I was envisioning ghettos of women in saris and men in kurtas
hobbling around, cut off from the diverse world, the normal world of America. But Iggy Ignatius, Shantiniketan’s founder says, “They don’t know what heaven is until
they come here.” “Every ethnic and religious group has retirement homes in America,” he adds. “Why
not us?”
In some media stories, Shantiniketan has been referred to as a Hindu community. But
in fact, it is as secular as India is, with a prayer room that accommodates all beliefs,
including Islam, Christianity, and Jainism. Ignatius is himself a Christian but belongs to the Brahma Kumaris, a sect that believes
in purifying the soul through meditation and positive thinking. “I was seeking
something more in life,” he says. Material and professional success was not enough.
Trained as an engineer, he got an MBA from the University of Illinois. He became a
marketing consultant, got into computers in 1974, and formed a successful IT
company. Still, he felt that something was lacking in his life; he was not actively
involved in society. He began to ponder his old age.
He started to long for his homeland. But his children would not let him leave the US.
He realized that like many Indians who came to the US in the sixties and seventies, he
was too assimilated into American life to adjust to India. Yet he longed for his own
community. “We are like salmon that return to the stream to die,” he says. “At the end
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stage of our lives, we want to be surrounded by our own kind.”
The name Shantiniketan, which means abode of peace, is taken from the name of the
university that Ravindranath Tagore, India’s only Nobel laureate in literature, founded
outside of Calcutta in the early 1900s. Devoted to the pursuit of art and poetry in a
natural setting, Shantiniketan, India, caters to one end of the population spectrum,
while Shantiniketan, Florida serves the other.
“There are 3 million Indian Americans,” Ignatius says. “Nearly 10% or 300,000 are
retired. And about one percent of those seek a place like Shantiniketan. So it is
definitely a niche community.”
The main reason residents come to Shantiniketan is the vegetarian food, he adds.
Pancholi and his wife Usha agree. “Don’t you get tired of eating institutional food day after day?” I ask. “No,” they reply. “We have so much variety.”
Breakfast is served continental style, with cereal, milk, toast, tea, and coffee. Lunch
consists of two vegetables, daal, roti, rice, and yogurt. In the evenings, there are over
30 items for dinner, including Gujarathi, Punjabi, and Maharashtrian cuisine. Mexican
and Italian dishes are also available. For the monthly price of $250, the meal plan is a
bargain. Residents are free to cook non­veg in their own kitchens, as many fish­eating
Bengalis do.
For the retired doctors and engineers, Shantiniketan’s condos at $250,000 apiece are
quite affordable. But then again, you can get a four, five bedroom house in Tavares for
that amount. Still, one of the attractions of a community like Shantiniketan is that it has
55+ zoning, Ignatius says, so residents do not have to pay property taxes for schools.
His model has been so successful that he has been invited to open homes in
California, Washington DC, Dallas, Texas, even overseas, in places such as Malaysia,
England, Australia, and New Zealand. One of the reasons for his success is that 50%
of the profits go back to the community, he says.
“What about low­income Indian­Americans?” I ask. A plan for a subsidized ashram is
underway, Ignatius replies. “For years, Indian­Americans tried to create something like this,” Ignatius says. “But
they couldn’t figure out the structure.” Until he came up with a financial model that
worked. “First, the land is purchased and infrastructure is put in,” he says.
“Development proceeds in phases. Out of a 100­condo community, about 30% or 30
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are pre­sold and built at the first stage. The developers get their profits and the next
phase is built. Once the entire project is finished, the management and ownership
transfers to the Shantiniketan Association.” Currently, in Phase I, the Ignatius Company prepares the food while the Association
serves it. The Association, in fact, has a committee for everything. There is a
management committee, a food committee, a transportation committee, a safety and
health committee, and a maintenance committee.
I recall my experience of communal living in Berkeley in the early eighties and the
inevitable arguments it involved over doing the dishes and taking out the garbage.
“Don’t you get tired of endless meetings and squabbles?” I ask.
“It is definitely like living in an extended family,” he says. “Individually, Indians are
great to work with, but communally, they can be difficult.” “I have to keep the premise of 3Cs in mind,” he adds. 3Cs consist of camaraderie, caring, consideration, and compassion, he explains. When I point out that these add up to four Cs, he chuckles and says that you can
combine consideration and compassion in one.
A sense of humor, after all, carries the day. Based on the principles of ownership and partnership, if Shantiniketan is modeled on
the co­housing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cohousing) facilities of Scandinavia, Priya
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Located on a side street off a main thoroughfare in the heart of Silicon Valley, Priya
offers one­bedroom rental accommodations for about $2,500 a month. Every year,
there is an increase of about 8%. Not only are the rates reasonable by Silicon Valley
standards, but for the majority of affluent Indian­American residents, very affordable.
Still, Pravin Thakkar, who moved here in April from Columbus, Indiana, worries about
his payments. He had a successful career in management in Indiana, but his rental
income from a condo there is low.
Cost is not Thakkar’s only pre occupation. He also worries about his health, about the
possibility of having surgeries without anyone to help him. He finds his loneliness
devastating. At the age of 66, Thakkar retired from his job after his wife passed away.
He could not bear to live alone in the Midwest. But now he regrets his emotional
decision. At least his work kept him occupied, he says. Now he has nothing to distract
him. He was never interested in spirituality, so it is hard to find solace in it now. He
tried to live alone in Cupertino near his daughter, but it was expensive. So he moved
to Priya. “My daughter tells me I was unfortunate to be so fortunate all my life,” he
adds. “I had a happy marriage, a happy life. I never had to face the meaning of life.”
“The people here are good company,” he adds with a tinge of wistfulness in his voice. Seventy­nine year old Kottarathil Venugopal also speaks wistfully about his forty­eight
years in the US. A professor of anesthesiology in Chicago, he started a private
practice after the university failed to offer him tenure. He had a successful career but
he could not get close to the Indian community there. Winters were cold; distances
large. His life was filled with work. Now, at last, he is part of a community. But talking
to the 79­year old Venugopal, one cannot help getting the sense that the life he had
envisioned when he first came to America has somehow passed him by. Still, he is
pragmatic about his decision to live at Priya.
“Medical facilities are close by,” he says. “I had a heart procedure at Stanford.”
The women at Priya seem more adapted to communal living than men do. Sheela
Jangla, who left India forty years ago with her husband to live in Dubai, has acquired
the resilience of a nomad. After retirement, she and her husband came to California to
be with their son, she says, but returned to India when her husband got cancer. Now
that they have green cards and healthcare through Obamacare, they are back. They
tried staying with their son but got bored. Her husband misses India, she says, but she
does not. Eighty­four year old Uma Jindal, a “snowbird” who comes to California every winter to
be near her daughter, is reluctant to give up her condo in Edmonton, Canada. She
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worked at the library in Canada, she says; she has friends there. Talking to these
strong women, one gets the sense that they are fiercely independent and determined
to avoid being a burden to anyone. They have used the philosophical underpinnings of
their culture, I observe, to prepare themselves for life’s transitions. One advantage of Priya Living is that it also offers rentals to a small number of young
Silicon Valley workers, providing much­needed diversity. The other advantage is that
in addition to yoga classes and other activities offered in­house, the residents can
access facilities in the communities such as food ordered in from nearby restaurants
or activities at the Santa Clara Senior Center.
I sit in Priya’s sunny but breezy courtyard, watching a group of residents mixing flaked
rice, peanuts, and spices to make Bhel, an Indian street food, when Arun Paul, the
founder of Priya, joins me.
“A column of yours explains the philosophy behind Priya Living perfectly,” he says,
jolting me out of my reverie. “I read it years ago, but I remember it clearly. I have it in
my office.” Titled “Exiled at Home,” he reminds me, the essay talked about the experience of
spending a lifetime in a place one was not born in. “You talked of the longings and
disorientations exile produces in immigrants,” he says. “Even though I was born in the
US, I feel it too; I am cut off from my larger family and community.”
“Now, millions of people live in places they were not born in,” I wrote in that 2011
column. “Yet, deep down, our longings have not shifted. To be born and to die in the
same place, surrounded by your own people and family, is a privilege that many no
longer have.”
In my column, Paul reminds me, I quoted a 1961 song a man sings to his country:
Sometimes, you come to me as my mother’s heart
And sometimes, like my little girl.
And every time I remember you, I ache.
Maybe it is Paul’s reminder of my words, or maybe it is the sight of these women,
young and old, peering over jewelry someone has brought for sale from India, but I no
longer feel separate from the group. Teary­eyed, I envy its camaraderie and
companionship. I recall the last words of that song:
Hum jahaan paida hue us jagah pe hi nikale dam
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Where I was created, There I will take my last breath.
Most of us no longer have the luxury of taking our last breaths in our birthplaces, I
muse, but Shantiniketan and Priya Living offer a very good simulation.
Sarita Sarvate (www.saritasarvate.com) has published commentaries for New America
Media, KQED FM, San Jose Mercury News, the Oakland Tribune, and many
nationwide publications.
Sarita Sarvate wrote this article supported by a fellowship from New America Media
and the Gerontological Society of America, sponsored by AARP.
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