Housing communities for senior citizens look like attractive options

The rise of such communities owes to many factors, such as the disappearance of joint family structures

Every evening in Neral, a town in the foothills of Matheran in Maharashtra, a group of seven or eight people gather without fail on a deck outside their dining hall. They swap stories while they wait for the spectacle of the Neral-Matheran “toy train” zig-zagging through the Western Ghats.  

“Some of us can see the train from our rooms, but it’s much more fun to do it together. It’s part of our routine,” says septuagenarian Usha Mantri. The train passes around 6.30pm, a time ripe for gossip as they wait for the stars to light up the quiet countryside. “You could never see the stars so clearly in Mumbai,” says Mantri. Formerly a college lecturer teaching Hindi in Mumbai, Mantri has lived in Neral’s Dignity Lifestyle Township since 2006. 

Most of her friends, all living on the same 16-acre campus, are 75. The place is nothing like an old age home, she insists. 

Mantri’s response will please the township’s founder, Sheilu Sreenivasan, who worked for precisely this 12 years ago. She says she visited 68 retirement homes across India to understand what a home for senior citizens “should not be”. She now has about 200 seniors living in 144 standalone cottages.

Dignity Lifestyle Township in Neral

One of the pioneers of a new life in Neral’s 16-acre senior-living township, Mantri is celebrating growing old with all of her favourite things, such as her potted plants and volumes of Saadat Hasan Manto. “Yeh ghar jaisa hi hai, bas ghar ko sambhalne ke koi responsibilities nahin hai (This is like home, without any of the responsibilities associated with maintaining a home),” she laughs. Her son lives in Mumbai. 

For a concept that has picked up only over the last decade in India, retirement homes are doing surprisingly well. They have also evolved — many are now well-designed, comfortable, even plush. These communities also defy the national stigma that the places marked out for senior citizens are for the “discarded or helpless,” says Nippi Kochhar, a former international investment banker. “Senior living communities, which have already evolved in the western world, should not be confused with old people’s homes,” he says.

The indoor pool in Antara

At 69, Kochhar believes it’s worth being part of “a community where life is hassle-free and with healthcare, on-call attention and assistance, and offers ways to build a new way of life”. Kochhar and his wife have a house in Delhi, but they are also part of senior-living communities in Goa and Dehradun.

Mornings in the Dehradun facility, Antara, often begin with Ayurveda classes for residents. As a “premium living facility” for seniors, Antara has only been active for one year, but it has already become a benchmark. “The kind of people Antara has, they are well-travelled, well-heeled, progressive individuals,” says Renuka Dudeja, head of marketing and communications at Antara. “They don’t want to be dependent on their kids for anything. They want to lead lives as relevant as the ones they had before retirement.”

The rise of such communities owes to many factors. These include the disappearance of joint family structures; seniors wanting to lead lives independent of their children, who often live elsewhere; the difficulties associated with running a full-time household, etc.

In Kodaikanal, Tamil Nadu, Aamoksh One Eighty has about 100 villas catering to the needs of a senior community. “The stigma of parents moving to retirement communities may still exist in pockets, but it’s fading quickly. It really helps when the families actually see one of these properties to realise it’s not the dark and dingy places they’ve pictured,” says Sanjay Lakhotia, founder and director of Aamoksh One Eighty. The fact that many of these places also offer trial stays helps too.

Aamoksh One Eighty will launch a “signature senior living property” in Kasauli, Himachal Pradesh in about four months. This will include a spa and a top-notch virtual golf stimulator.

What makes a place fit for seniors are subtly-blended features. Senior-specific interventions, from the height of switchboards to rounded edges of walls, are crucial. “We have anti-skid flooring since one of the greatest risks a senior faces is a bad fall. We also have pressure-sensing alarms to let us know if someone falls in their apartment so that we can have the in-house paramedics respond at the earliest,” says Dudeja.

A yoga session at Bougainvilla Hermitage in Goa

On Antara’s 14-acre campus, there are no stairs. At the swimming pool, sessions of aqua aerobics help seniors with joint pains. In Goa’s Bougainvilla Hermitage, all apartments have washrooms at least 80 square feet wide for easy movement of wheelchairs. They also feature shower seats which can be moved up and down.

Bougainvilla Hermitage was born out of personal need. When engineer Michael Lobo and his Japanese wife Tomoko, wondered about where to retire, they realised that though retirement homes were aplenty, none suited their needs. “They were all run by organisations which tell you what to eat and drink. They tell you when it’s prayer time, sleeping time and dictate when to put off your television,” says Lobo, the 67-year-old director of Bougainvilla.

From cooks to round-the-clock housekeeping staff and yoga sessions and all-weather swimming pools, many of these living spaces come across more as holiday homes rather than retirement spaces. Some of these are also known especially for healthcare. Antara, for instance, is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Max India, Aamoksh One Eighty has Apollo as its healthcare partner and Bougainvilla Hermitage has an in-house Ayurvedic healthcare centre.

The cost of living varies widely depending upon services available, staff-to-resident ratio, geography etc. Antara has 200 premium apartments spread over 14 acres, and the smallest of their living spaces, about 1,500 square feet comprising a one bedroom-hall-kitchen set-up, starts from Rs 1.75 crore.

Apart from a one-time partly-refundable deposit starting at Rs 24 lakh, Neral’s Dignity Lifestyle also requires a monthly fee of about Rs 22,000 per head. In Bougainvilla Hermitage, an apartment costs about Rs 50 lakh (all are currently sold out). Other such places include Ashiana Utsav in Lavasa, Serene Senior Living in four places across South India, and Tata Riva and Mantri Primus Eden in Bengaluru.

Back in Neral, as Usha Mantri prepares for yet another evening of waiting for the toy train to pass and the stars to come out, she says there’s no place else she’d rather be.