She enters the room with an arthritic limp, a crutch under an arm. The huge red bindi on her brow crinkles as she strains to lower herself into a chair, smoothing the folds of her nine-yard sari so typical of the attire of rural Maharashtra. Behind her a dozen children troop in, their chores and games temporarily forgotten in the excitement of a guest's arrival at Sanmati Bal Niketan, a two-flat home for orphans at the Pune suburb Hadapsar. They surround their Mai. "I am Sindhu Sapkal," Mai announces.

Another time, another place. The voice, quietly commanding, carries through the breeze across an open maidan in Somurdi, a remote village of Purandhar tehsil in Pune. Sindhu is addressing a crowd, the men sit hunched in front while their women listen from open doorways. Sindhu, 52, quotes poet-saints Tukaram, Namdeo, Bahinabai and Gadgebaba as she speaks of her causeÑbringing up destitute children at five institutions she has set up in Maharashtra. She asks them for donations. 

The response is immediate. Sindhu's sari pallu rapidly fills up with coins and currency notes. The village sarpanch promises a quintal of rice to her ashram, the Mamata Bal Sadan, at Kumbharvalan, home to 70 children. A shop owner offers 10 packets of glucose biscuits. 

As dusk falls, Sindhu packs up for her move on the morrow to Satara district, where a meeting with gramsevaks has been scheduled. Deepak Gaikwad, the first child she took under her wing in the 1980s, is accompanying her. In his thirties now, Deepak has taken over charge of Mamata Bal Sadan from his Mai. Mai set up the sadan on a piece of land Deepak inherited from an uncle. Donating the land, Deepak "told me that had I not taken care of him, he would have been nowhere," says Sindhu. It was the second home she built.