Community: Our greatest strength

I was in my weight-training studio the other day when a Latino man remarked that he had read about Indian culture being all about close-knit families, and how wonderful it must be to have such a strong, built-in support system.

Another Caucasian friend added that in her neighborhood in Florida, Caribbean and Indian families are the ones with the vibrant gatherings and deep sense of community. “It’s beautiful to see how people are in and out of each other’s homes, and you can’t tell whose kid belongs to whom.”

I understood what they meant. Many Indians pride themselves on rarely eating, celebrating, or grieving alone. I grew up in a culture where dropping by someone’s home without notice wasn’t intrusive; it was welcome. Food appeared before you had the chance to decline it. Children belonged to every auntie in the room. If someone was sick, meals arrived. If someone died, the house filled before sunrise.

Community has always been one of India’s greatest strengths. But somewhere along the way, I began wondering whether we had confused proximity with intimacy.

Research increasingly suggests we have. People can be surrounded by others and still feel profoundly lonely. It is a finding that unsettles one of our most cherished cultural assumptions: that family automatically protects us from loneliness. It doesn’t.

Loneliness isn’t always about being physically alone. Researchers increasingly describe it as the gap between the relationships we have and the relationships we long for. By that definition, someone can share a dinner table with others every night and still feel unseen.

What the research shows

Among Indian adults aged 60 and older, 13.4% reported frequent loneliness, according to the nationally representative Longitudinal Ageing Study in India (LASI), which surveyed more than 30,000 older adults. The reasons for this frequent loneliness included widowhood, living alone, chronic illness, functional disability, lower education, limited social participation, and fewer close relationships.

A separate nationwide survey of more than 4,500 Indians aged 15–29 found that over 75% reported feeling lonely despite having friends, and nearly 80% said they turn to friends rather than family when emotionally distressed.

A community study in Gujarat found that 40% of older adults met criteria for loneliness, and that lonely participants had significantly poorer diet, exercise habits, sleep quality, and use of preventive healthcare. 

The cultural paradox

These numbers take on new meaning against the backdrop of Indian culture. We have historically emphasized joint families and collectivism, yet urbanization, migration, and shifting family structures are quietly increasing emotional isolation. Stigma around mental health often discourages open conversation about it. Cultural expectations to “adjust” to preserve family harmony or to avoid burdening others can leave people emotionally disconnected even while surrounded by loved ones. Loneliness, it turns out, can coexist with constant social contact, because connection and emotional intimacy are not the same thing.

Immigration complicates this further. Many of us recreate India abroad by building communities through WhatsApp groups, potlucks, temple events, cricket matches, and weekend dinners. From the outside, our communities look tightly woven, and in many ways they are. But migration also compels us to carry enormous emotional loads. We become translators for our parents, bridges between generations, caregivers across continents, ambassadors between cultures. Somewhere beneath all that responsibility, our own emotional lives can quietly go missing.

Community versus connection

India is often described as a culture where no one is ever truly alone. Yet emerging research suggests many Indians are emotionally lonely while living in homes full of people. We are remarkably good at showing up for birthdays, weddings, graduations, holidays, and funerals. We get the outfits right, as well as the gifts, the menu, and the music. But we are not always as inclined to show up for one another emotionally.

This past summer, I went to several family gatherings of our own, and to those of friends whose relatives were visiting. The homes were full of laughter, food, stories, and generations under one roof. I watched people squeeze around dining tables, balancing plates of biryani, kebabs, and homemade desserts, with conversation moving easily between cricket scores, college admissions, real estate, exchange rates, and who had gained or lost weight. 

But almost no one asked, “How have you really been?”

The absence of emotional vocabulary

What struck me wasn’t an absence of love. It was an absence of emotional vocabulary. I found myself wondering how many people in that room were quietly carrying grief, burnout, caregiving strain, health worries, or fears they didn’t feel safe enough or have the words to express aloud. We know how to offer food before feelings, advice before curiosity, solutions before empathy. We tell people to stay strong long before we ask whether they’re tired.

I often think about grief in Indian families. We gather together after someone dies. We cook, pray, organize rituals with remarkable precision. But months later, once the casseroles stop coming and regular life resumes, many grieving people are left carrying the weight alone. We know how to honor loss ceremonially. We are still learning how to accompany it emotionally.

In many Indian families, honesty about difficult feelings doesn’t come easily, and denial can feel safer than confrontation. When something painful surfaces, it often arrives sideways with a pointed comment, a passive-aggressive remark, an eye roll, an extra round of scotch, or even unsolicited advice about how we’re raising our children in America. 

Cultural expectations to be strong, accommodating, successful, respectful, and self-sacrificing can leave people feeling unseen, even within the fold of loving families. The issue isn’t always social isolation—it’s the absence of emotional safety, honest expression, and the feeling of being deeply understood.

Ayurveda has long understood something modern psychology is only beginning to articulate: human beings regulate through relationship. Safety isn’t only an internal practice; we also borrow it from one another. Our nervous systems settle when we feel seen, heard, and accepted, not simply surrounded by people.

Community alone is no longer enough

I don’t believe Indian culture has a loneliness problem because we’ve lost community. I believe we have a loneliness problem because community alone is no longer enough.

As our culture evolves, I hope the next evolution won’t be about gathering more often but rather about us becoming emotionally braver within the gatherings we already have, being present, asking one more question, sitting through one uncomfortable silence, letting someone answer honestly instead of quickly.

We have perfected the art of making people feel welcome. Perhaps the work ahead is making them feel heard and understood. Because sometimes the most healing question isn’t “Have you eaten?” It’s “How are you feeling?”—and having the courage to stay long enough to hear the answer.

Drawing on my work as an Ayurvedic practitioner, culture writer, and grief specialist, along with my own experience of loss and immigrant identity, I invite you to reconsider what it means to build relationships where people feel not just surrounded but truly known.