The Ultimate Road Trip

A Bengaluru couple gave up their homes and jobs to spend their lives living in villages with tribes, to find solutions to their everyday problems.

- Pankti Mehta Kadakia

In drought-hit Masrudi village, Latur, farmers have a tough time making ends meet, often sacrificing their children’s education along the way. In Swarupnagar and Baduria, West Bengal, dangerously high levels of arsenic are found in the groundwater, making it difficult to access clean drinking water. In Dima Hasao, Assam, farmers of the mainstay, organic ginger, and other crops are ruthlessly exploited by middlemen.

While their problems are stark and varied, they have a common thread tying them together. They have all been touched by a countrywide philanthropy initiative that believes all humans are part of a larger family— aptly titled Rest of My Family (RoMF).

This isn’t an ordinary philanthropy project. Run by a Bengaluru couple— both engineering graduates—who gave up their homes, corporate jobs and life as they knew it, RoMF for them is a way of life, a life-long commitment. Photographer Piyush Goswami, 33, and writer Akshatha Shetty, 31, have a simple philosophy— to live out of their jeep, drive deep into India’s hinterland, and stay with various tribal communities to process their problems—and drive realistic, implementable solutions and stay with them until they begin to see change. They also run a website with articles and documentaries on these tribes to help raise awareness. They call RoMF a social-work-through-art initiative.