One very hot summer afternoon, my mother stood at our kitchen window looking out at the house next door. Our neighbours were Portuguese immigrants – from the “old country”. Their house was kept dark all the time and the [...]

We talk about inclusion all the time. It’s a concept, it’s an issue, it’s a right, it’s an imperative. At Latika Vihar, it’s just the way it is. That means it may be funny and endearing (that’s what we hope) [...]

I took this photo when I was in Florida in 2008, just after my mother’s death. My sister, my father and I had gone down there to meet Mom’s twin sister, who was too ill to make it to Massachusetts for the funeral. Now she is gone [...]

Matthew, who has a mental handicap, has five brothers and sisters. The other children get quite a few treats because of him through gestures of kindness offered by local organizations. A free afternoon at the fair, for example, or tickets to the [...]

A Mandate and A Budget. What could be better? We needed toys and books for Gubbara and we had money to burn. I canvassed my friends for suggestions of where to buy what, enlisted Kavita Arora from Children First and Deepa Bhushan from my ancient [...]

Our newest project, Gubbara, is housed in the government run Doon Hospital.  Government Hospitals are famous for being dreary and grey: long dark corridors with stone floors, walls covered in posters with huge amounts of text so small that [...]

A few years ago, my children and I were the “last straw” in someone else’s life. This friend had endured a series of calamities in her family and we arrived with ours at precisely the wrong moment. Circumstances were such that [...]