Anuj Saxena knows his mother's death is coming. She talks about a guiding light about to take her away. Her eyesight is so weak that she sometimes thinks her son and daughter-in-law have entered her room when actually it's her bedroom door's shadow. Although it is a bit too early to pack up her belongings, Saxena cannot push out the thought of how he's going to make arrangements for his 80-year-old mother's funeral. It is not the cost that bothers him, but the burial customs he must prearrange for, and some crematoriums will not cater to his traditional rites.

California crematoriums are not ready for a Hindu funeral, according to Saxena, and that's why he is eager to get preparations ready. In some cases, the problem arises when the funeral home will not allow the family of the deceased to practice certain rituals, including: letting the son start the fire during a cremation, burning ceremonial lamps, requesting a separate room to bathe the body within the parlor and allowing the throwing of petals.

Within California, there are 8.5 million foreign-born residents, and the Bay Area has about 100,000 Indo-Americans. Some mortuaries are being blamed for not being able to fulfill their customary crematorium wishes.

Ramesh Patel, an assistant emergency department chief at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Hayward, is one example. During the cremation ceremony of his mother at a mortuary near his home, the staff would not allow his brother to light the fire to begin the cremation, a mandatory practice in Hindu rituals. The mortuary cited fire safety reasons and insurance liabilities.

"We had to move the body because the mortuary we first decided on to hold the service at refused to let us do anything," Patel says. The family then had to pay several hundred extra dollars to move the body to Orange County. Indian cremation and service in the United States starts at $2,000, compared to a few dollars in India. "There are people who are insensitive and want to exploit peoples’ emotions and throw expenses," he says.

Patel and three other Silicon Valley professionals created the Cremation Guide, a booklet that offers information about funeral homes and is a how-to cremation guide for Hindus, Sikhs and Jains. The booklet has been distributed through the nonprofit Gujarati Cultural Association, with 3,200 members based in Fremont, and the Kaiser Permanente in Hayward.

"Now, with an uprising of second generation Indo-Americans, there is a loss of tradition," Anita Singh, Hindu-born and raised in the states, says. "Since most of our parents have grown up in India, they know exactly what to do when there is a loss of a family member or friend. But unfortunately, there are some cultural traditions you lose because the American culture works differently." Singh says the Cremation Guide is a good reference for those who lack knowledge of proper cremation funeral procedures.

Gene Koutz, associate director at Oak Hill Funeral Home and Memorial Park, says they are accustomed to and ready for cultural funerals. The staff makes sure their clients’ requests are met. "It is up to how the family wants their service, everything is geared to take care of what the family wants and needs," Koutz says. "They have guidelines to go through, but mostly we just follow the direction of their minister and the family."

Meghna Vyas recently attended her grandfather's funeral held at Oak Hill in San Jose and says this was the first death the family has experienced since living in America. "We had an incredible support system,” says Vyas. “The hospital's hospice took care of most of the funeral arrangements and that made a huge difference.”

In another funeral service in San Jose, morticians learned how to tie sari knots on women's bodies. And the Fremont Memorial Chapel has set aside a special room for families to wash dead bodies. Woodlawn cemetery has a facility that allows the family to retort the body and perform a witness cremation.

In the United States the funeral industry makes a profit of over $20 billion. The Sacremento Bee reported California's funeral industry is the nation's largest and generates over $1 billion. Because of a high number of immigrants, the funeral industry has expanded the types of services offered. Kristen Welch, licensed funeral director at Nobel Chapel, says they provide a service for a mixed clientele.

In the Bay Area, cultures are as diverse as funeral practices, and there are many different rituals family and friends of the dead can choose from. In Hinduism, the deceased are washed by family and may be clothed in traditional dress. In the Muslim culture, people of the same sex handle the body, and then it is buried without a casket and facing Mecca. The Chinese pick a grave site in accordance with feng shui, and offer food and incense on lunar calendar holidays.

Now that California funeral parlors are adjusting to the needs of its culturally diverse clientele, Saxena says he has yet to decide whether he will have his mother's service held in California or have her sent back home to India.

To find out more about the Cremation Guide go to gca@bayarea.com.