Parents travel 10000 miles to live with children grandkids

At 2:55 p.m. sharp on a recent afternoon, five minutes before her granddaughter's school bus would arrive outside their home in Cortlandt, Vasantha Rajagopalan, wearing a floral patterned sari with its long end billowing in the wind, waited at the curb - her gaze fixed firmly on the bend in the road.

When the bus curved onto Habitat Lane, she took a few steps closer to the pavement and watched as Sanchitha Chari, 7, a first-grader at Lincoln-Titus Elementary School, stepped out.

"Did you finish your sandwich?" was the grandmother's first question.

Once inside the house, Chari washed her hands and sat at the kitchen island with her younger sister, Saadhvi, 4, for her "lunch" of rice and rasam, a broth made out of tomatoes and lentils.

"She eats only bread at school," said Rajagopalan, 61, suggesting that a sandwich couldn't be considered substantial enough to qualify for lunch.

Two years ago, when Vasantha Rajagopalan and her husband, Ramanujachari Rajagopalan, 73, moved to New York from Chennai, India, to live with their son's family, they knew they would keep themselves busy in an alien country by caring for their grandchildren.

In 1988, their daughter, Nimmi Srikanth, was the first in the family to arrive in the U.S after her marriage. Fours later, their son, Sampath Rajagopalan, left to pursue a master's degree in engineering from Clemson University in South Carolina.

The couple's two children were now both 10,000 miles away.

The Indian population in the U.S. more than doubled from 1990 to 2000 and grew an additional 38 percent in the past five years, according to the Census Bureau's 2005 American Community Survey, making it this country's fastest-growing Asian group.

"As more and more of us come to this country to pursue our careers, our aging parents are being left behind," said Dr. Shishir Bhattacharya, president of the India Center of Westchester in Elmsford. "For those of us here, that means living with the constant fear of getting that dreaded midnight call."

For many couples such as the Rajagopalans, who have no children in India, retirement can become a very lonely experience. The impracticality of visiting often on tourist visas - and the 17-hour flights - can mean limited interactions with their children and grandchildren.

There also is the fear of aging without any support.

"My wife and I have an age difference of 12 years," said Rajagopalan. "One who is born first should leave first. And I never wanted her to remain in India without her daughter and son when she becomes too old to take care of herself."

That realization has prompted many among the Indian diaspora to sponsor their parents for permanent residence in this country. This often translates to parents and their adult children living with each other again after a gap of 15 to 20 years.

Social assimilation for the older generation, who have spent close to two-thirds of their lives in another country, also poses a great challenge.

Bhattacharya, a gynecologist with a private practice in Yonkers, said he tried to get his parents to move to this country many times in the 1980s.

"They came to visit us and couldn't stay for more than six weeks. For them, it was like living under house arrest," said Bhattacharya, an Irvington resident. "They couldn't relate to the newspapers or TV programs here. It was too isolating for them. I had to drive them to Queens every weekend so that they could see others like them."

Many of these older new arrivals don't drive and have to spend long hours within the confines of the four walls while their children go to work.

"When I came to this country, I put my ego in the back seat," said S.D. Kalyanaswamy, 72, a retired chief engineer of a large public-sector company in India, who came over with his wife, Savitha, 66, in 2002. They now divide their time between their son's house in Chappaqua and their daughter's in White Plains.

"Back home, you get people to do all kinds of chores for you, but here, you get hands-on experience," he said.

"Once I came here, I realized if I have to be productive, I would have to drive," he said. "This way, I could help with grocery shopping and take my grandkids to their after-school activities."

Both his son, Ashok Kalyanswamy, 44, a senior vice president at Lehman Brothers, and daughter-in-law, Jyotsna, 41, who works for PepsiCo, said their days of watching the clock at work were largely over. They have a 16-year-old son and a 9-year-old daughter.

"With both of us working, knowing that my parents were around gave us tremendous flexibility and peace of mind," Kalyanswamy said.

With his outgoing personality, S.D. Kalyanaswamy is part of many social service and prayer groups in Westchester County and Queens and volunteers at the newly opened India Center of Westchester's office in Elmsford.

"To live in the suburbs, learning to drive is the key to success," Kalyanswamy said. "It allows my father to manage his own time."

For those who don't drive, the Internet keeps them connected to an outside world they want to be a part of. Every day, Rajagopalan spends a few hours online, watching streaming videos of his favorite temples in India.

"All the latest pujas (prayer ceremonies) being performed can be found on the temple Web site; it is the next best thing to being physically present there," he said.

Sampath Rajagopalan, 35, a vice president at AllianceBernstein, said his parents seem to have adjusted well, mostly because of their introverted and spiritual personality.

"They never had a big social circle back in India, and most of their close relatives are now here," he said.

Still, there are compromises and adjustments to be made while living with in-laws.

"But all that sounds really trivial when you consider the help you are receiving," said Rajagopalan's wife, Usha Srini, 35, a manager at Consumer's Union.

S.D. Kalyanaswami's advice for parents considering a similar move: Leave your Old World expectations behind.

"If you expect your daughter-in-law to wait on you, that would be a gross blunder," he said.

Most joint families view this arrangement as symbiotic, where both grandparents and grandchildren come out as winners.

From the time she was 6 months old, Laya Rajan, 14, a freshman at Yorktown High School, has had both sets of grandparents staying on and off with her family.

"If they had not been around, I wouldn't get to know them as well as I do, and I wouldn't be able to speak Tamil as well as I can," she said.

Two years ago, all four of her grandparents were seated in the front row during her Bharata Natyam arangetram, a graduation performance for a classical dance form of India.

"It was one of the biggest moments of my life, and I am glad they were part of it," Rajan said. "If it had not been for them, I may not have taken it up or I might not have kept it up."

When Amrutlal Sanchala's brother sponsored him for a visa in 1978, he moved with his family from Gujarat, India, to Queens and found work as a suit pocket maker. After his retirement, when Sanchala, 72, began having health issues, his son asked him and his wife, Bhanumati, to move to his home in Dobbs Ferry.

"That's our culture. We take care of our parents," said Kirit Sanchala, 43, who owns the popular Indian grocery store Bhavik in Elmsford. "And our kids are learning so much about our religion, culture and language."

Most afternoons, Sanchala, who doesn't drive, takes the Westchester Bee-Line bus from Dobbs Ferry to Elmsford to help his son and to see people.

At 9 every weeknight, the family, including granddaughter Pinkal, 12, and grandson Bhavik, 16, gathers to watch its favorite Hindi soap opera, which beams into the living room via satellite. The soap, "Kyonki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi," which translates to "Because the Mother-in-Law was once a Daughter-in-Law," is one of the most popular soaps out of India, based on the universal daughter-in-law/mother-in-law saga.

"Hopefully, our kids are watching us and learning how to take care of parents," said daughter-in-law Daxa Sanchala, 42, a lab technologist.

And what happens when the grandchildren grow up and leave for college?

Gopi Desai, 20, the only child of Briarcliff Manor residents Dr. Swati Desai, 47, a dentist, and her husband, Pankaj Desai, 50, a businessman, will be a senior at Tufts University in the fall. The Desais could be defined as empty nesters, only their nest is not empty.

Swati Desai's parents came to live with her in 1993 when she was struggling to balance her busy career with raising a child.

Her father, Dr. Dolat Desai, a retired dentist, and her mother Saroj, both 75, immersed themselves in their new role. Desai got his driver's license and chauffeured his granddaughter, Gopi, to after-school activities, while Saroj Desai took care of household chores and meals.

But after Gopi left for college, conversations stopped flowing as easily as they once did around Gopi and her activities.

"They sometimes complain that I don't talk to them much," Swati said. "But there is not a whole lot to talk about."

The past couple of years have not been easy for the Desais. A bypass surgery for Dolat Desai and two knee replacement surgeries for Saroj Desai have Swati Desai stretched thin.

The concept of retirement homes, which for many in the Indian community is tantamount to abandoning one's parents in their old age, carries such a stigma that most people refrain even from discussing it.

Bhattacharya, 57, said it's high time Indians got over that hang-up.

"What happens 10 years down the road, if they are bedridden?" Bhattacharya asked. "It's time we seriously thought about old people's homes for the Indian community, perhaps with idli (steamed rice cake) and dosa (lentil and rice crepe) for breakfast instead of bacon and sausage."

In 20 years, many of the longtime immigrants will themselves be in need of such a place, he said.

"Anyone who thinks they are going to be living with their American-born children in their old age is living in a fool's paradise," Bhattacharya said.

For her, Swati Desai said, it has been a rough couple of summers, trying to balance work and taking care of her parents.

"But they took care of us. And it's our turn now," she said.

Or as S.D. Kalyanaswamy, who said he had no desire to live in an old person's home, put it: "As we grow older, we need them more than they need us."

O.k. CONCERNEDVOTER Agreed they will pull their own weight and we
do need skilled workers. Our problem is we are letting in to many unskilled workers who rely on social services. This makes them a liability
not an asset. We must also slow the flow of all immigration if we are
ever going to get a grip on this problem and our government is not doing
that. We should only let in about 300,000 a year not 4 million. In the end
it will be the death of us.

Posted by: watchdog on Tue Jun 26, 2007 11:56 am

Watchdog:
You are right about over population. Our immigration laws have to be revised. We cannot fault the new immigrants who are obeying our laws and becoming new citizens. They are the past and the future of our country. They are bringing skills which our country needs. It does take much courage to uproot and leave your home to be with your family. I do not believe they will ever be a burden to our society.

Posted by: concernedvoter on Tue Jun 26, 2007 11:07 am

I agree with you concernedvoter to a certain extent. at least these people are here legally and are productive. However, between the mass
legal, illegal . high birth rates, swearing in as citizens and immigration
lottery we will not be able to absorb the over population of our nation
with out changing the face of the nation drastically and our quality of
life going down hill. Do we really want in the future 800 million or over
a billion in population like China or India? I think not. More people you
have more problems. That's a fact.

Posted by: watchdog on Tue Jun 26, 2007 9:42 am

I give these LEGAL immigrants a lot of credit. They left their home and everything they knew to be with their family. They are giving back to their community by volunteering and helping others. They are learning English and teaching their grandchildren the language of India. Their children and grandchildren will benefit and they will not be alone as they age.
This is truly what America is all about.

Posted by: concernedvoter on Tue Jun 26, 2007 9:31 am

The Bhavik Cash and Carry grocery store, 6 E. Main St., Elmsford, will move down the street to 130 E. Main St. by the end of July.
Along with the usual offerings of basmati rice, lentils, spices and pickles, the new 1,600-square-foot store will feature a 13-door freezer with a variety of packaged ready-to-eat Indian foods.
Phone: 914-592-8086

Center information
The India Center of Westchester is at 249 Saw Mill River Road, Elmsford.
Phone: 914-909-2231 or go to www.indiacenterofwestchester.org

The Asian Indian population in the United States grew from 1,678,765 in 2000 to 2,319,222 in 2005, according to the American Community Survey of the Census Bureau.
About 54 percent of the Indian immigrants embarked on their journey to the U.S after 1990, with the population more than doubling -a 106 percent increase - in that decade.
In 2000, 75 percent of all Asian Indians were foreign-born, with a median age of 30.3.
The survey also found that Asian Indians constitute the largest Asian group in both Westchester and Rockland counties.
Westchester County: 16,388
Rockland County: 6,038
Putnam: 298*
* According to the 2000 census; the survey does not have 2005 statistics for Putnam yet.
For more information, go to,
http://www.census.gov/acs/www

Additional information :

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