MUMBAI: There is a quiet tragedy in walking past someone who has been forgotten - a man talking to voices no one can hear or a woman clutching a bag that holds her entire world. They can be seen on sidewalks, underbridges or near garbage dumps.
Behind every face is a story that began somewhere safe - at a kitchen table, in a childhood bedroom, inside a family that once knew their laugh.
Witness to a sight 37 years ago where an unkept, thin man was drinking water from a roadside gutter, psychiatrist and Magsaysay awardee (2018) Dr Bharat Vatwani and his wife Smitha (also a psychiatrist) chose to reach out to that man on the street and listen to his story. "It was not an easy interaction but we took the time to talk to him, a mentally afflicted graduate," said Vatwani. "We asked him if he wanted to come with us. After a while, on getting his consent, we took him to our clinic to be washed and treated. This was our first case of rescuing and treating a homeless mentally ill person," he said.
Reuniting homeless people, who live with mental illness, with their families, is not just an act of kindness - it is an act of remembering. The Vatwanis started their rescue work in a two-room tenement in 1988, which has now spread to a bigger 120-patient facility in Karjat.
Their three-phase therapeutic programme, consisting of the rescue and treatment of mentally ill street people, reuniting patients with their families and promoting awareness of mental health in communities is elaborately encapsulated in a just published book, 'Unsaid'.
"There were many struggles to have this book published. The publishers I approached (over eight years) wanted something masaledar. I refused to be coerced by them; it was finally published last month," said Vatwani.
The book highlights how mental illness can quietly take a person away. "It doesn't always arrive dramatically; sometimes it begins with fear, confusion or a growing sense of not belonging. Relationships strain. Support systems break under pressure. One day, a person who is deeply loved can become lost - not because they were unwanted, but because no one knew how to help them anymore," says the author.
The malady becomes louder and crueler. Without treatment, stability or safety, symptoms become intense. Trust fades. Memories blur. The 67-year-old Vatwani - who founded Shraddha Rehabilitation Centre along with his wife Smitha - has rescued, treated and integrated over 7000 of India's mentally ill roadside destitutes into their families. "We have a remarkable reunion rate of 95%," said Vatwani.
A wall in his modest, patient-friendly office in suburban Borivali, has framed pictures of those who have inspired him and his mission - Dr Baba Amte, Rabindranath Tagore and Mother Teresa - while an altar in a corner has deities of all faiths. "I was not a successful medical practitioner. I did not like studying medicine, but with two of my brothers being doctors I was naturally pushed to study medicine," said Vatwani. However, a casual introduction to psychiatry fired his passion. "I knew this was my calling."
He is a member of the Maharashtra State Mental Health Review Board (Thane district) and works closely with the state-run mental asylums across the state. "As mental health is trivialized and romanticized a lot, its core issues such as rehabilitation and reintegration gets pushed to the sidelines," he said.
The narratives in 'Unsaid' include heart-breaking tales. One of them is of a mentally ill patient who had left home with two children and had no recall of them. "We have social workers who understand and speak different languages. One of them heard this woman utter a word that she recognized which helped start conversation in that language. It took us time but eventually we reunited this woman with her family and also found her children in two different places," said Vatwani.
Families often carry their own grief. Parents lie awake wondering about the whereabouts of their children. Siblings scroll through old photos, searching the moment when everything changed. In July 2022, when a recovered mentally ill man - who had crossed the Bangladesh border into India - was reunited with his family in Bangladesh, the man's father sobbed uncontrollably. "He kept touching his son's hand in disbelief."
Vatwani writes that reuniting someone with their family can be the first step to healing. "Not because families are perfect, but because they are familiar. A familiar place can make the world feel less frightening. When done with care, consent and support, reunification can restore dignity to a life that has been reduced to survival," said Vatwani.
The process requires patience and compassion. It means seeing the person first, not their illness; and then providing mental health care, social support, and time. Reunification is not about forcing someone back into the past that hurt them - it is about offering a door, and letting them choose whether to walk through it, he said.
"In helping people find their way home, we are not just changing individual lives. We are choosing to be a society that remembers, cares and believes that no one is beyond reaching," said the doctor.
India's mental health policy landscape is anchored by the Mental Healthcare Act 2017, which adopts a rights-based approach aligned with international conventions such as the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. The Act recognizes the right of persons with mental illness to live in the community and mandates access to rehabilitation services.