Upadhyaya Foundation

Upadhyaya Foundation is located in the Udyog Bhavan building on Sonawala Road in Goregaon East. It is a very busy industrial area, so there is always the sound of trucks and people shouting outside. We are in room 251. It is a small, rectangular space that we have packed with desks and shelves. It’s not the kind of place you’d see in a magazine. The walls are a dull off-white, and the floor is just plain grey stone. We have a few fans that hum all day long to keep the heat away. There is no central air or fancy lighting here. Most of our day is spent on the phone or typing away on our old computers. We’ve been in this building for quite some time now, so we know most of the other people on our floor. We don't have a fancy sign, just the name painted on the door. It’s a bit cramped when more than four people are inside, but we make it work. We usually get our lunch from the small stalls downstairs near the gate. The food is spicy and cheap, which suits us just fine. We don't have a lot of formal meetings. If we need to talk, we just turn our chairs around. It’s an honest, no-frills kind of place. We just focus on the tasks at hand and try to get through the pile of documents on our desks. It’s just a regular Mumbai office where we show up and do the work.