Simba, the resident black-and-white cat, unspools out of her little corner, stretches languidly and jumps on to Meena Mutha's lap. Abandoned and starving to death a while ago, she was adopted by Mutha and now she not only has a home in a corner of the Manav Foundation's office at Masina Hospital in Byculla, central Mumbai, but is also used for animal therapy sessions conducted for people with schizophrenia and crippling mental illnesses.

"Mentally disturbed individuals respond beautifully to animals. They often feel rejected by a society that tends to judge their trauma," says Mutha, as she ushers Simba out of the room and settles down to have a cup of tea. "Animals, on the other hand, do not judge."
Mutha heads Manav Foundation, which works with mentally ill or disturbed people and those suffering from depression or schizophrenia. They have a rehabilitation centre or a day care therapy centre, where the victims of mental illnesses are treated, not so much through medicine but through a variety of counselling sessions and workshops like theatre, music and craft.
It was a personal tragedy that led 51-year-old Mutha to set up Manav Foundation. She was born in Jabalpur and was inspired by her doctor father and social worker mother; the seeds of activism were sowed early in young Meena. The family shifted to Mumbai and Mutha studied at Jai Hind College before getting married. In 1982, she co-founded Aastha, a group working with 'borderline children', kids with below normal intelligence level who did not fit in society.

The catalyst for setting up Aastha was her own daughter (name withheld to protect her identity), a child with severe learning disability and one who was also given to bouts of severe depression. The little girl was born premature and early on, Mutha realised that her daughter was not 'normal'. "I have twins and while one grew well and fast, the other was slow. She took her own time to start walking." Though the child showed signs of a learning disability, Mutha sent her to a normal school. Her daughter faced adjustment problems, but the mother was reluctant to send her to a special institute for spastic children. "Those were tough times; I was running from pillar to post to find special schools for kids with learning disabilities. At that time there were none in Mumbai, only two in Hyderabad, one in Bangalore and one in Chennai."

That's when she met Zaira Rangwala, who was then heading the Children Orthopaedic Hospital, where Mutha took her daughter for treatment. "She strongly felt that I should set up a special school for kids with learning disabilities. I didn't but seven years later when I met Rangwala again, she had set up the School for Remedial Education." Mutha sent her daughter to the school, got together with parents of other such kids and formed Child Reach, a counselling-cum-outreach programme.
Her daughter's school years were relatively smooth after that, until she hit the troublesome teens. "Being vulnerable and emotionally weak, she was prone to severe depression," says the mother who took her child to several medical practitioners but with very little result. It reached such a critical stage that Mutha had to get her admitted to Masina Hospital.
Her personal circumstances gave her the impetus to start her second outreach programme under the aegis of Manav Foundation. "I felt actual treatment wasn't enough so I looked around for a rehabilitation centre. I again drew a blank." She did what she knew best: she seized the opportunity and took that crucial first step. She approached the administrators of Masina Hospital with a proposal to start a day rehabilitation centre and they gave her the go ahead. Today, a corner of the hospital forms the base for Mutha and her team of therapists and volunteers.