“So hope for a great sea-change On the far side of revenge. Believe that further shore Is reachable from here. Believe in miracles And cures and healing wells.”  ― Seamus Heaney The Delhi gang rapes sickened me physically. For days and weeks I [...]

Sakshi and Moy Moy. Those two girls – young women now – are inextricably linked with the history of the Foundation. They were the first students at Karuna Vihar, the only ones who turned up on opening day, though we had gone into the [...]

Seamus Heaney, the great Irish poet, died too soon. I had always been sure I would meet him one day. He was only 74. I thought there was plenty of time. I thought he still had years and years ahead of him, years rolling out like fields and peat [...]

Lots of organizations construct their own buildings. They buy a piece of land, they raise the money they need and they get right to it. Not us. We bought our land nearly ten years ago. Then we started thinking and re-thinking. We forgot we owned [...]

India wasn’t supposed to be like this. The dream this country’s founding mothers and fathers had was of a free, vibrant nation; a secular place where people could prosper by the work of their own hands; where traditional knowledge [...]

Chaos in India is legendary and calmly accepted. Lines don’t exist (or if they do, they are meant for someone else). Traffic snarls can take hours to untangle and are almost always caused by each driver navigating by his own personal [...]

Living in India automatically rules out much time alone at home: domestic helpers, a parade of vendors all day long, and a culture which encourages casual visitors who drop in without notice and serious guests who come to S-T-A-Y. Home Alone [...]