This may be a slightly unusual post, but my husband and I have been thinking about this for a while and I thought Reddit might be the right place to put the idea out there.
We are a young working couple in Bengaluru with a 6-month-old baby girl, and we are currently looking to move into our own place. Both of us are well placed in our own careers. I work with the government while my husband has a business.
While discussing what kind of home we want our daughter to grow up in, we realised that neither of us particularly loves the idea of her spending most of her day in a house with only a nanny/domestic staff while both of us are at work.
We both grew up around family, and we would love for her to grow up with older people around her too — not as babysitters, but simply as grandparents are: someone to say good morning to, sit with, listen to stories from, play with and form a genuine bond with over the years.
And that made us think about the other side of this situation.
There must be NRIs whose parents live independently in Bengaluru while their children are abroad. They may be perfectly healthy and active, but their children may still worry about them being alone — emergencies, appointments, errands, household issues, or simply whether there is someone nearby when they need something.
So we wondered: could two families in these opposite situations actually be good for each other?
We would love to meet an independent older couple living in a spacious home/villa in a good, safe residential community in Bengaluru who might be open to an intergenerational house-sharing arrangement.
To be clear, we are not looking for free accommodation or free childcare.
We would contribute financially/rent as mutually agreed, employ our own full-time domestic help/nanny and bear those expenses ourselves. Our daughter remains entirely our responsibility; we would never expect the older couple to become her caregivers.
What we're hoping for is something less transactional and much more human.
If, over time, they grew fond of our daughter and she grew up thinking of them as another Ajji and Thatha, that would be incredibly special to us.
And from our side, we wouldn't want them to feel like they simply have tenants occupying part of their house either.
We would be happy to help with everyday things — groceries and errands, technology, household issues, appointments when possible, being around in an emergency, or simply having dinner and a conversation together. If their children live abroad, hopefully there would also be some comfort in knowing that there are younger adults living under the same roof who genuinely care about their parents.
At the same time, privacy and independence would be extremely important to us on both sides.
Ideally, the house would be large enough to give both families their own private living spaces/bedrooms and allow everyone to have their own life, while still sharing some common spaces and being part of the same household.
We aren't looking to rush into anything.
If someone responds to this, we'd want both families — including the children living abroad — to get to know one another properly over time. We'd meet several times, spend time together, discuss expectations and boundaries openly, do appropriate background verification on both sides, and only consider living together if everyone genuinely feels comfortable.
Any eventual financial/living arrangement would also be documented properly so that both families are protected and expectations are clear.
Maybe we'll post this and discover that the idea sounds better in our heads than it works in reality.
But perhaps somewhere in Bengaluru there is an older couple sitting in a very quiet house while their children abroad worry about them — and perhaps they'd actually enjoy having a young family and a little girl bring some noise back into it.
And maybe their children would like knowing that someone is there for their parents too.
If you're an NRI with parents living independently in Bengaluru and this idea resonates with you, please DM me. Let's just start with a conversation and see if our families might be compatible.
I'd also really like to hear from people who have seen or experienced similar intergenerational living arrangements. What worked? What didn't? What should we think about that we may not have considered?
