Indian associations in America are the worst at this.

So I was a new grad student in the US, fresh off the boat from India. Was really interested in doing more American-culture kinds of things, and didn't really bother with the local Indian Association, until I became friends with someone who spent a lot of time there.

Once I started hanging out at those events and sitting in on the meetings, I realized it was HELL.

The association was run pretty much by the wives of other grad students. You can't work on a dependent visa. so all that joblessness and boredom got channeled into the indian association.

They got really passionate about petty shit. They went positively crazy about organizing events for the lamest of reasons. every small indian festival had to have an event, and they would badger us to join in no matter how busy we were.

And you couldn't just show up. you had to pay money towards the event. And you had to help out. Make the food, or organize the entertainment, or deejay, or move around the chairs, or.... no dearth of boring annoying jobs.

I tried maintaining a safe and healthy distance from all this, but you can't keep a strong middle-aged indian woman away. these ladies coaxed, cajoled and coerced me into doing stuff for them. they used every weapon in the book. they went to the extent of telling me i needed to come because pretty young girls is what the older unmarried grad students were looking for, and besides, wasn't i getting on in years, and didn't i want to be happily married to a well-educated indian guy? I tried to be polite, but they wouldn't let me.

so i lashed out saying if my mother wanted me to get married and cook, she wouldn't have spent all this money trying to get me to study. they took so much offense at that, and began a campaign of ostracizing me. They even got my roommates in on this, so pretty much had to endure Indian parties at my own apartment I wasn't invited to.

And even the others weren't sane. My roommates would whine to me about how unreasonable the middle-aged women were being and talk about them day in and day out. i'd say why dont you make like me and get the fuck out of there? though they didn't say it, they didn't want to get ostracized like me.

I did my own thing during grad school and was generally cordial with the rest of the indians, and then this thing happened that broke the camel's back for me.

some guy in the group had taken a fancy for me, and couldn't muster up the guts to tell me how he felt, so he told the rest of the indian community, and they tried to play matchmaker and kept calling me to parties just so that he could talk to me. i refused most of those invites, because of aforementioned attempt to maintain safe and healthy distance. ultimately, he did tell me how he felt, and when i said i didn't reciprocate, he got weird and creepy and stalky and i had to threaten a restraining order.

after that, i've lived in three more indian cities, with very vibrant indian communities. i've avoided them all like the plague, and preferred making friends, indian and otherwise, in other settings.

TL;DR: indian communities in USA are run by middle-aged jobless wives who take things too seriously. And sometimes there are creepy men too who get stalkerish. The food's good though.