I'm Going Home ; Rich Non-Resident Indian Retirees Are Coming Back Home, to Mysore, Pune, Kolkata, and Other Such Cities to Roost. Real Estate Developers, for One, Aren't Complaining. Ahona Ghosh in Pune, Ritwik Mukherjee in Kolkata and Rahul Sachitanand in Mysore Investigate.

Business Today › February 14, 2006

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Summary

Mysore aspires to be the next big thing in Karnataka after Bangalore, Pune has retained some of its greenery, and its status as a university-town, yet grown into one of the country's most happening it hubs, and Kolkata would like the world to know that the city is witnessing an industrial renaissance of sorts. All three cities are similar; they are re-inventing themselves without trying to lose what once made them special (although long-time residents of Pune would beg to differ on this count). That, the mixture of the old and the new has found a surprising group of takers, NRI retirees or semi-retirees that want to return to India, to a quiet location, yet not be cut off from the mainstream.

The urge to return to India is driven by several factors. Some of the NRI retirees now returning to India are people who left the country in the early 1970s. "We were first-generation immigrants," recalls Sankar Prosad Dutt, a civil engineer who spent over 30 years in various locations in the us before retiring to an 11th floor apartment in Calcutta Greens in Kolkata. "After retiring, all of us wanted to come back to our friends and relatives." The low cost of healthcare in India is another reason why retirees choose to come back to the country, says Dr A.R. Jayaram, a plastic surgeon who was once based in Chicago, proffering a pragmatic reason. "We (NRI retirees) prefer places in suburban areas," adds Lal Khemlani, a 63- year-old who moved to Pune from the US (where he spent 27 years). He spends three days a week honing his skills on the greens and the other three days working with Clover Builders, a city-based developer.

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I'm Going Home ; Rich Non-Resident Indian Retirees Are Coming Back Home, to Mysore, Pune, Kolkata, and Other Such Cities to Roost. Real Estate Developers, for One, Aren't Complaining. Ahona Ghosh in Pune, Ritwik Mukherjee in Kolkata and Rahul Sachitanand in Mysore Investigate.

Messrs Jayaraman, Dutt and Khemlani are part of a growing tribe. It includes the likes of Govind Moriani, a 5...

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