Culture and compassion in Indian senior care in New York

This story was part of Healthbeat’s live storytelling event, “Aha Moments in Public Health,” held Nov. 18 at Powerhouse Arena bookstore in Brooklyn. Watch the full show here. Sign up to receive Healthbeat’s free New York newsletter here. My story begins far from Queens, in a small, quiet village in Andhra Pradesh, India, called Bangaramma Peta. In that village lived a gentle, scholarly man named Vangapadu Lakshmi Naidu — my father. A man who spent his days surrounded by books, ideas, and the calm joy of thinking deeply. But one day, age brought a silent thief: vascular dementia. Slowly, the words he loved so dearly began slipping away … until even the names of the people he loved were out of reach. At the time, I was a young psychiatrist in New York. I understood dementia in theory. But when it hit home — my home — none of the textbooks could prepare me for that pain. And what hurt most was this: There was nowhere for him to go. No community center in his village. No space to meet peo