Twenty beds, and the number that won’t leave me.

Voice: Neil Pinto · TAP Charity Inc.
Source: Personal field visit to Tata Memorial Hospital & the Leukemia & Lymphoma Foundation (LLF), Mumbai.

I went to Mumbai expecting to write a cheque in my head and walk away. Instead I spent a day inside Tata Memorial Hospital, met the volunteers who hold families together there, and came home unable to stop thinking about a single number: 2000.

An Uber, a security guard, and ₹6–10 lakhs.

My day started with an Uber ride to the hospital to meet Thyagarajan Palani, a Leukemia & Lymphoma Foundation volunteer. At the gate, the security guard asked for patient information and identification, so I texted Thyagarajan to meet me at the entrance. He came over to the private wing of Tata Memorial, waved to the guards, and they let me through.

He guided me to registration for the private wing — where patients who can pay for their own treatment sign in. That treatment, he explained, averages about ₹6–10 lakhs. I did the quick math: roughly $10,000 to $15,000. For an ordinary person, that is an impossible amount of money.

My first impression was that I had walked into a crowded bus station. The sheer number of people in the registration area was overwhelming. I took a few breaths, secured my mask, and we made our way up to the second floor.

Sheetal, the matchmaker.

On the second floor we met Sheetal, the Tata Memorial employee who is the conduit between the hospital and LLF. Sheetal is the person who does all the magic — making sure that every patient and their family gets helped, and that no one is denied access to treatment. She plays the role of a matchmaker, tapping into the LLF funds, and especially the portion donated by TAP Charity.

What makes TAP’s money different, she told me, is that it comes with no prerequisite conditions. Donations from many other organisations, charities, or individuals carry strings — a patient must belong to a particular religion, or fit some other criterion. TAP’s funds don’t. That is what makes immediate assistance possible.

The funds TAP currently donates can support roughly 40 patients through the initial phases of treatment. In my mind, I thought this had to be a drop in the bucket against the scale of the problem — and I took the courage to say so to Sheetal. She quickly reassured me: precisely because these funds carry no conditions, they are invaluable. They let her act now.

So I asked her the question that had been forming all morning. What would the ideal number be? What would change everything?

If we could support 2000 patients, that would be nirvana for us.

— Sheetal, Tata Memorial Hospital · roughly ₹2 crore, or about $250,000.

Twenty beds for thousands.

We made our way to the sixth floor, walking through a hallway filled with pediatric patients, their families, and many people simply sitting on the floor. I could feel the tension, the stress, and the way people were clinging to hope.

The sixth floor holds the central Lymphoma–Leukemia ward: twenty beds in total, occupied for a minimum of four weeks at a time. Three or four are for women, the rest for men. I couldn’t wrap my head around how twenty-odd beds could possibly serve the thousands of people waiting on the floors below. It was mind-blowing to realise that, for so many, those twenty beds are the difference between life and death.

There we met Anil, a volunteer who works with the families lucky enough to get a bed. He walked me through what that actually involves: contacting every family to make sure they have the necessary documents — income certificates, Aadhaar cards — getting them into the system, then depositing money for medicines and making sure there is enough in each account to buy the next day’s medication.

All of it runs off his cell phone. I remember thinking: what happens if he misses a patient, or can’t reach someone? Wouldn’t they get lost in the system? Then I reassured myself that this is organised chaos, and life goes on in Mumbai.

The families on the road.

On the way to the general admission area we walked down a corridor with a view of the road. I noticed dozens of people sleeping on the ground around the hospital’s perimeter, with no shelter over them.

Thyagarajan explained: these are families who have nowhere to stay. Once a patient is admitted, they are required to remain within an hour — within a roughly one-mile radius of the hospital — for eight months. Often, the moment families hear the word cancer, they rush to Mumbai for treatment, leaving children and elderly parents behind, certain they’ll be back soon. Then treatment begins, and the eight-month mandate begins with it.

Remember that these are people living below the poverty line. If the patient is a man, he is usually the family’s sole earner, with no way to travel back and forth. Many face impossible choices, leaving families at home with no means to survive. I reached a point where I simply could not comprehend how lower-income people travelling in from the villages survive this disease, with every odd stacked against them.

But Thyagarajan reminded me that once a patient gets into the program and stays the course, the survival rate is actually quite high. The hardest part is helping the caregiver not throw in the towel.

He told me of a young boy from a village, caring for his mother after losing his father, who said he would end his life that night. Thyagarajan talked him off the ledge and promised to help him and his sister. The mother is cured today. The boy is alive.

Thyagarajan Palani, LLF volunteer

The joint consultation room.

The route to general admission detoured through the pediatric unit, and this was even harder to take in. Volunteers from the Make-A-Wish Foundation were gently gathering children’s wishes. The place was so crowded that I saw small kids and older patients with feeding tubes and IVs sitting on the floor and the stairways with their caregivers, waiting for their turn.

We reached the Joint Consultation room — the JC — where patients and families meet a panel of doctors to hear test results and the prognosis on life and death. Many of them don’t speak the language the news is delivered in. Unlike in the United States, it isn’t the culture here to ask questions, or for doctors to invite them. Before a family can even begin to process what they’ve heard, the session is over.

That’s exactly where volunteers like Anil and Madhav step in — helping patients understand what’s happening, connecting them to the right people, sorting out funding and paperwork, holding their hands through all of it. Madhav told me it can be emotionally draining, especially with young patients; he has small children of his own, and he feels the caregivers’ pain. I watched the two of them juggle handwritten registers and WhatsApp calls, advocating for one patient’s needs after another.

The people who carry it.

The number 2000.

The visit ended over a cup of coffee with Thyagarajan, learning a little about the other charitable work he does. I walked away thinking about all the thankless work that people like Thyagarajan, Sheetal, Anil, Madhav, and countless other volunteers do every single day, just to give patients a glimmer of hope and the will to keep fighting. Each of them is, in the truest sense, a gift to humanity. People like them are the reason I want to help — to make a difference in even the smallest way.

When I thanked Thyagarajan for everything they do, he turned it around on me.

If there were no donors like TAP Charity, the volunteers on the ground wouldn’t have a chance to save patients — or to give them any hope at all.

Thyagarajan Palani

And so the one thing lodged in my mind, the thing I cannot shake, is that number. Right now, TAP’s funds reach about 40 families at the start of their treatment. Sheetal’s nirvana is 2000.

Please help us meet that goal. Every gift to TAP Charity Inc. goes to the field with no conditions attached, which is exactly why Sheetal and her volunteers can put it to work the same day. My hope is simply to spread the word about the work of LLF, and to give more patients a real chance to fight.