It began not with a plan, but with a feeling. I had cooked a pot of biryani — not an unusual thing — but that evening I drove somewhere I'd been meaning to go for months. I had no organisation behind me. No logo. No volunteer programme. Just rice and a sense that I could no longer defer this particular thing I knew I needed to do.
The Foundation came later. The clarity came later. The name, the structure, the pillars — all of that came later. What came first was the discomfort of sitting with what I had, and the even deeper discomfort of doing nothing with it.
There is a particular kind of guilt that comes not from wrongdoing but from inaction. From recognising something and choosing, day after day, to look away. I had been looking away for longer than I am comfortable admitting. Not out of malice. Out of the ordinary busyness of building a life, building businesses, moving from one thing to the next.
The evening I drove out with that pot of biryani, I was not trying to change anything. I was trying to stop looking away.
I still drive myself. I still cook, or arrange for it to be cooked. I still show up in the same places. I have found that consistency is its own form of dignity — it says: this is not a gesture. This is a practice.
The Foundation grew from that practice. Not the other way around.
From the archive
What Gratitude Actually Looks Like in Practice