Inner Companion Foundation

The Inquiry

We are not a teaching organisation that has already figured it out. We are a seeking organisation. These are the questions we are sitting with, the things we have changed our minds about, the tensions we are navigating, and the conversations we are looking for.

Last updated April 2026 — this page changes as we change.
Open Questions
Questions we are sitting with

Not rhetorical. Not answered. These are live questions we return to regularly.

Why do people stop playing in the name of work?
And is the cost higher than we realise — not just personally, but in the quality of the work itself?
What does a community of practice look like when it grows beyond the people who started it?
How do you scale without losing the thing that made the original small gathering worth having?
How do we hold indigenous knowledge with rigour, not nostalgia?
There is a difference between recovering what was displaced and romanticising what we don't fully understand. How do we stay on the right side of that line?
What would it mean for a family to be a learning institution in its own right — not a preparation for school, but a complete learning environment?
Can the development sector be regenerated from within, or does it require people to step outside it first?
This question sits at the heart of the Inner Compass programme.
Current Tension
A paradox we are navigating right now

Updated when the tension changes or resolves.

We believe deeply in the slow, unhurried pace of real learning — in the value of sitting with questions rather than rushing to answers. And yet we are building a digital presence, writing for SEO, trying to reach people who find things through search. How do we carry a philosophy of slowness inside a medium built for speed? We are not sure we have resolved this. We are trying to make the content itself slow — long-form, considered, honest — and trust that the right people will find it at the right time.

Current Thinking
We've been thinking about...

Dispatches from our current thinking — not fully formed, not essays. Just what is alive for us right now.

Play as a leadership competency. Most leadership development programmes focus on skills, frameworks, and mindset. We keep coming back to the question of whether the capacity for genuine play — to be present, curious, and unattached to outcome — is actually the competency that underlies all the others. And if it is, why is it never on any leadership curriculum?

The library as a community act. We bought 41 books from a small publisher in Indore — books on unschooling, indigenous knowledge, regenerative farming, NVC. No single family could justify buying all of these. But a community library makes them accessible. We are thinking about what else could work this way.

The difference between a programme and a practice. A programme has a start date, end date, and curriculum. A practice has none of those things. We keep noticing that what changes people is the practice, not the programme — but that programmes are what people sign up for. We are trying to figure out how to sell a practice.

The Unlearning Log
Things we have changed our minds about

Intellectual honesty means showing the revision, not just the current position.

We used to think →
That the most important thing was to give children complete freedom, and that any structure was a form of coercion. We now think children need containers as much as they need freedom — the question is who designs the container and with what intention.
We used to think →
That community required physical proximity — that the Tiru experience couldn't be replicated in a city. We now think proximity matters, but shared practice matters more. Chennai has shown us that a community of 200 homeschooling families is as real as a small village — if the relationships are tended.
We used to think →
That sustainable living required leaving cities. We now think the question of how to live regeneratively in a city is actually the more urgent and interesting question — because that is where most people are.
Open Invitations
Seeking collaborators for...

Specific things we are looking for people to think and work alongside us on.

Mapping indigenous plants in Chennai. We want to document what grows here, what it was used for, and who still carries that knowledge. If you know someone who does, or want to be part of this, write to us.
A collective library model for Chennai's homeschooling community. We own books that should be in circulation, not sitting on one shelf. We want to think with others about how a shared library could work practically in a distributed community.
Research into play spaces in Indian apartment complexes. As Arasu begins his sports infrastructure work, we want to understand what families actually use, what gets abandoned, and what design principles make a difference. If you have data or stories, we want them.
Conversations We Are Looking For
People we want to talk to

Not for an interview series (yet). Just conversations we need to have.

Someone who built a school from scratch in an Indian city — and has had time to see what worked and what they would do differently.
A farmer who unschools their children — where the land itself is the classroom and the curriculum is what the seasons ask for.
A development sector leader who left, spent time away, and came back — and can say honestly what changed.
A parent who tried unschooling and stopped — and is willing to talk honestly about why.
Someone who plays every day as an adult, without apology — and has built a livelihood around it in some form.
A Question for You
Community Ping · April 2026
How do you handle the pressure your children feel when friends their age are in formal coaching — and you have chosen not to enrol them?
Share your experience →