Every week, The Sound Space on Wheels, a painted bus run by the sisters Kamakshi and Vishala Khurana, pulls into one of Mumbai’s bastis, and children who have been waiting for it climb aboard for a music class. The bus now reaches more than 500 children aged five to 12, visiting seven communities a week.
The bus grew out of the pandemic. When lockdowns stopped the classes they ran with partner NGOs, the sisters worried about the children they could no longer reach: children with little digital access, living in neighbourhoods too spread out to travel from. In 2023 they decided to go to the children instead, and the mobile classroom was on the road the following year.
What is The Sound Space on Wheels?
The Sound Space on Wheels is a bus converted into a mobile music classroom by The Sound Space, the Mumbai music school that Kamakshi and Vishala Khurana started more than a decade ago. It brings weekly lessons rooted in Indian classical music to children in the city’s bastis, using music to build language skills and social and emotional awareness.
Two sisters, one idea
The Khurana sisters grew up in a musical home, and their father, a musician, was one of their gurus. Both also studied psychology, and it shows in how they teach. Music here is a way to help children listen, speak and feel at ease, not only a skill to perform.
The work has found partners beyond Mumbai. Since 2025, the Playing For Change Foundation has supported The Sound Space, and the sisters worked with the writer Ashmi Shah and the illustrator Aayushi Shah on Jungle Jugalbandi, a children’s book that introduces Hindustani music and its instruments through a story set in a forest.
Why the Sound Space on Wheels matters
For a child with no instrument at home and no music teacher at school, a weekly class on a bus can open a door that would otherwise stay shut. The sisters say the children now wait for the bus each week, ready to hop on, learn and have fun, and some of them may be the listeners and musicians of the next generation.
Young people are at the centre of other new initiatives too. Read about MALHAR 2026, a youth-focused celebration of the classical tradition, and find more Education news on No Thokpit.
Sources: Good News with Impact, on the bus classroom (29 April 2026); SheThePeople, interview with the founders (23 October 2024); eShe, profile of the sisters (4 October 2024); Playing For Change Foundation, programme page (background); Rolling Stone India, on Jungle Jugalbandi (background)