Gana Unnayan Parshad

Our office is at 10, Gomesh Lane, which is one of those narrow streets where you really have to watch out for the motorbikes. It’s a small space, mostly just a few desks pushed together and a lot of filing cabinets that are starting to rust at the bottom. We’ve been operating out of this lane for years. People from the neighborhood are always popping in to ask questions or just to say hello. It can get pretty crowded when we have more than four people inside at once. There’s a small bench outside the door where people wait if we’re busy. We spend most of our time dealing with community matters and sorting through piles of documents. The lighting is a bit dim because there’s only one small window that looks out onto the wall of the next building. We have an old computer that takes a long time to start up, so we do a lot of things by hand still. There’s always a stack of flyers or notebooks sitting on the corner of my desk. We don’t have a fancy sign, just a small one painted on the wall. Sometimes the power goes out in the afternoon, and we just sit and talk until it comes back on. It’s a very local way of doing things. We know everyone on the street and they know us. It’s not about being a big organization, it’s just about being present here in the lane.