Running For, Running to this internship with ApniShala.org

Running For, Running To

In 2019, Ganesh, Sachin and I wanted to run the Mumbai Marathon together. What I didn't expect was that the run would quietly hand me the ending of a story I hadn't finished telling.

The marathon came first; the cause came second. To run, we needed bibs — and they were surprisingly hard to come by, until Karon connected us to Apni Shala. (The same Karon whose phone call two years later would set so much else in motion.) So we ran FOR Apni Shala before we truly knew them. That order of things — commitment first, understanding after — turned out to be fitting, because what I learned about them has stayed with me ever since.

When I met the founding team of — Amrita, Sangeeta, Rohit — the whole impression landed at once. Here were people who had chosen to make this their mission, who spoke about the children they served with a closeness and conviction that you cannot manufacture. I came away feeling I had met people doing something real, and doing it for the right reasons.

And what they were doing was something I hadn't encountered framed quite this way before: social emotional learning. SEL, at its foundation.

Apni Shala builds emotional literacy in children — a vocabulary for what they feel, a language for their own inner lives. Through Khoj, their SEL-aligned school in Govandi and Mankhurd, they centre a child's psychological wellbeing alongside academics, working not just with the child but with the whole ecosystem of teachers and caregivers around them.

Here is what drew me in. When you give a child the language to understand their circumstance, you offer them a truth that can change everything: poverty is not a disease. It is not something wrong with you. It is not your fault. It is a circumstance — and circumstances can change, and you are not defined by the one you were born into.

That reframing is quiet and enormous at the same time. It is the difference between a child who believes they are broken and a child who understands they are simply somewhere difficult, for now.

This is the kind-work I want to be close to — not to teach it, but to learn it.

And that desire to learn has only grown more acute with time. As I wrote in When Caring Became a Craft, the causes I've come to know through TAP have kept raising the same question — not just how do I give, but where and how does one actually begin to make a difference? Due diligence taught me how much I didn't know about the work itself. Every organisation I've helped support has sharpened that question rather than answered it. This internship is part of that ongoing quest — a chance to stop asking from a distance and start learning from the inside.

The seed was planted in 2017, when Appa and Amma moved to Ashraya. It found form at Snehalaya in 2019, where, as I wrote in When Feeling Found a Form, Dr. Girish first told me that to really understand this work, I would need to be immersed in it. It found purpose through TAP in 2021. It waited through two years that weren't. And now it has found its destination — back where it quietly began, with the organisation whose bib I wore before I understood what I was running for.

In 2019, I ran for Apni Shala.

In 2026, I am running to them — to learn.

The internship begins.

When the Door Opened and I Didn't Walk Through

 When the Door Opened and I Didn't Walk Through

Some years you defer to circumstance. Other years, if you're honest, circumstance defers to you.

By 2020 I had the intention clearly enough — an internship at Snehalaya, a chance to finally be close to Appa, to immerse myself in the work the way Girish had suggested. Nothing had been formally arranged. No dates confirmed, no conversations started with the organisation. It was still an intention living in the near future, waiting to become a plan.

Then the pandemic arrived and made the decision for me. The world closed. The intention went back into its drawer. There was, if I'm honest, a certain ease in that — the deferral came from outside, so it cost nothing to accept it.

2024 was different.

By then Mummy was gone — a year had passed since her death — and the desire to be near Appa had become sharper, heavier, more layered. This time the intention had become a plan. Time at Snehalaya was booked. Flights were arranged. The years of waiting had finally moved into action.

But Appa was anxious. He had raised me in Mumbai — a city where the train takes you anywhere, where the infrastructure of daily life is always within reach. Ahmednagar was something else: a small town without public transport, unfamiliar rhythms, no metro instincts to fall back on. His worry wasn't about the work. It was about his city-bred son navigating a world he hadn't grown up in. A very particular kind of parental love, the kind that knows exactly what it built and worries about what it didn't.

And then a colleague went on medical leave. The timing was difficult. The team needed covering. I said I would stay.

Looking back, I know what the honest account is: the colleague's medical leave was real, but Appa's anxiety was the bigger weight on the other side of the scale. The leave gave me a reason I could say out loud. Appa's worry gave me permission I hadn't quite admitted I was looking for.

That is not a comfortable thing to write. But it is true.

Two deferrals. One taken from me, one handed back. The question that had followed me since 2017 — what would it look like to actually be close at hand? — was still waiting, more patient than I deserved.

When Caring Became a Craft

When Caring Became a Craft

The pandemic did strange things to time. It also did unexpected things to friendships.

In 2020, a group of us — batchmates from Thadomal Shahani Engineering College — started getting together regularly, the way you do when the world goes quiet and you suddenly need to know if the people you care about are alright. We were checking in. That was all it was, at first.

Then on a call on April 25, 2021, something shifted. Karon — a friend, a leader, someone I'd describe as one of the highest-bandwidth people I know — broke down. She was being flooded with messages asking for help, and one of her own employees had reached out at the 11th hour for medicine money. Remdesivir. Karon couldn't get it in time. The employee didn't make it.

That brought the pandemic home to me in a way the news never had.

That evening, sitting with Appa and Amma for our daily prayer, with the mind finally quiet, something small and clear emerged. Rohini and I decided: we would find people doing the work on the ground, and we would support them. The next day I posted a fundraiser appeal. The response was humbling — together, close to $200,000 was raised.

But money moving was only the beginning of what that season taught me.

Through MahaPECOnet and our partnership with Ratna Nidhi in Mumbai, I got to see what ground-level coordination actually looked like — 1,376 oxygen concentrators procured and delivered to rural hospitals, a verification process built around accountability, plans for an oxygen bank to serve the urban poor at five rupees. I met trustees Rajiv Mehta and Arvind Shah, and was struck by the years of quiet experience in how they moved. No drama. Just systems, trust, and relentless adaptability.

Out of that season, TSEC Alumni Philanthropy — TAP — took formal shape. A nonprofit, founded by batchmates, built around the belief that giving could be more than a transaction. That pooling resources could reach further. That rigorous due diligence could find the organisations that deserved to be found.

That last part turned out to matter more than I expected.

Due diligence is humbling work. You start asking questions — how does an organisation function, how are decisions made on the ground, how does help actually travel from donor to the person who needs it — and you quickly discover how much you don't know. Not about the organisation. About the work itself. About what it takes to keep something running at the grassroots, day after day.

Girish had told me in 2019 that to really understand, I needed to be immersed. TAP, in its own way, was now telling me the same thing. Funding work from a distance, however thoughtfully, kept raising questions that only proximity could answer.

The seed of 2017. The form of 2019. And now, in 2021, a reason grounded in something more than feeling — a recognition that to give well, I first needed to understand deeply. The internship idea was no longer just about being near Appa. It had become something the work itself was asking of me.

When Feeling Found a Form

When Feeling Found a Form

Some ideas stay soft until someone, or something, gives them an edge.

Srikanth and Chitra had introduced us to Snehalaya earlier, but it was the 2019 visit that made it real. I had carried the question — what would it look like to be close at hand, to do something meaningful near Appa — for two years by then. Walking through Snehalaya is where that question stopped being abstract.

Dr. Girish Kulkarni and his team gave us a full day. We walked through the orphanage. We visited the school — a full boarding school, built specifically for the children of women Girish has worked to rehabilitate from prostitution. A place that says: whatever your mother's circumstances, your story can be different. And then we stepped into the dining hall — a room built from donations that had poured in after Snehalaya was featured on Satyamev Jayate. Aamir Khan had told their story on national television, and people had responded. What that response built was this: a room where children sit down to eat every day. Standing in it, I felt the distance collapse between a story told and a life changed. Between someone deciding to give and something real existing in the world.

We spent time at the greenhouse — run by families of HIV positive patients building a livelihood with quiet dignity. We saw the Paithani weaving center, staffed by women finding economic ground under their feet. Each space was its own world, each with its own logic of care.

And then there was the moment I didn't anticipate. A baby at the orphanage was being placed into her permanent home that day. Girish offered me the chance to hand her to her new parents. I did.

There are experiences you process later, sometimes much later. That was one of them.

In conversation with Girish I tried to articulate what I was circling — how does one actually begin this kind of work? How do you move from caring about something to being useful to it? He listened, and then he said something that cut through cleanly: to really get answers to those questions, you need to be immersed in this space. Not visiting. Not observing from a distance. In it.

That was the first time the word internship entered this story. Not from me — from someone who had built something real and knew what real engagement required.

I left Snehalaya that day with the soft intention of 2017 hardened into something I could almost hold — a plan, or at least the shape of one.

The Seed (2017)

 When Ashraya Became Home

Some intentions don't arrive with a plan. They arrive as a feeling — quiet at first, easy to set aside. For me, 2017 was the year that feeling took root.

That was the year Appa and Amma moved from Dosti to Ashraya. From an independent home they had built their life around, to a community setting — a different rhythm, different neighbours, a different kind of daily life. It took some adjustment, not just for them but for all of us. The Ashraya family didn't come pre-fitted into our world; they had to become part of it, and we had to become part of theirs. Slowly, they did. That extended family is now simply family.

And with that came something else — the address of celebrations shifted. Appa's 80th birthday. An anniversary. Family get-togethers. The place for all of it was now Ashraya. A specific, named place where they were, where we gathered, where the texture of family life was now rooted.

Before Ashraya, "being close to my parents" was an idea spread across many spaces and memories. After Ashraya, it had an address.

I don't think I said it out loud then — not clearly, not as a plan. But somewhere in watching them settle in, in learning to belong to Ashraya the way they were learning to belong to it, I started asking myself a question I couldn't quite shake: what would it look like to actually be close at hand to my makers? Not just visiting. Not just calling. Present. Available. Close enough to matter on an ordinary Tuesday, not just at a milestone.

That question has followed me for eight years now. It has survived a pandemic, a profound loss, two near-misses with internship plans, and the quiet accumulation of life's reasons to defer. But it started here — in 2017, when Appa and Amma made Ashraya their home, and something in me decided I wanted to find my way back.

Appa’s pillars are no more

 

Both of them would be 83 years old this year. They were Appa's (my Dad's) closest support system that worried for his well-being and he knew that.

My Mom(Amma) would chide Appa all the time, even for the littlest things, like his forgetfulness. When she wasn't chiding him, or he wasn't responding, it felt like a gloomy day at our home. I think Appa believed Amma was doing it for his good, and he'd always follow her advice though sometimes begrudgingly. An unexpected delay from his outing would have her concerned and on the phone.

My Appa's younger brother, "MSP" as Appa referred to him in 3rd person, or Purushottama in first-person, was Appa's life-breath. In his weakest moments Purushottama always on Appa's lips, first thing waking up.  When Purushottama hurt, Appa was in pain, and he'd not sit around. He’d strive to do something about it, finding solutions that Purushottama would follow. Since April 2022, Appa's been on a mission to find a way to help MSP recover from his illness. He found a new purpose when Purushottama moved close to him in Nerul.

Between Amma’s care, concern for Purushottama, our Appa has had a purpose; especially these last year. In their passing this purpose has been taken away, it’s a void. All of them taught me a lot. I have 2 jousting emotions - on the one hand sad on Appa's new loneliness; and the other side of me is waiting for new lessons from Appa. Lifelong Appa's found ways through a variety of issues; this is not limited to my adult life with him - others include Chittappa, Amma, my Paati (Grandmother) have recounted various situations that Appa's navigated the family to safety. Appa, counting on your positivity and the village around us to get through this phase.

100 Oxygen Concentrators - shipped out to rural Maharashtra

 As of June 30,2021 - the latest batch of 100 OCs were delivered to

1. Sindhudurg District Hospital-20
2. Govt dental college and hospital, Mumbai-6
3. Solapur district hospital-74 (break-up as follows)
1. PHC Yashwant Nagar -2
2. PHC Pillav- 2
3. PHC Velapur - 2
4. RH Malshiras- 4
5. RH Natepute- 4
6. SDH Akluj- 6
7. CS Solapur - 54

After the timely action and delivery of the oxygen nationwide, the focus has to shift to help with other essential supplies. The next …

31 millions vaccines delivery (25Million 1-dose, +6MM 2-doses administered) across 3012 vaccination sites. It’s a good first line of defense against the virus, and arresting poor outcomes.

This impact is from outreach to 479 villages in 36 districts and 13 cities, 2906 urban low-income societies.

Detailed reports: t.ly/Jcpg