In 2018, when Sacred Games made its startling debut on Netflix, actress Rajshri Deshpande, who was cast as Subhadra, wife of the antagonist Ganesh Gaitonde (Nawazuddin Siddiqui), was working overtime in Pandhari village in the Aurangabad tehsil. She remembers having to skip being part of the crime web-series’ media promotions, and even holding back on several new film offers that followed its success, because she had made a promise to the villagers. Deshpande, at the time, was in the midst of rebuilding the Zilla Parishad Primary School in Pandhari, home to around 75 children. The dilapidated building meant that the kids were studying in the open grounds or under a tree. 

Having worked in the village through her NGO Nabhangan Foundation for nearly five years, the actor had felt an almost desperate need to provide a pucca structure to the children. “I had appealed to the local authorities, but they didn’t seem to have the budget for it,” she says. On an impulse, Deshpande remembers telling them that she would take up the cause. “I wasn’t an educator or architect. I didn’t even know what it takes to build a school,” she tells us. And yet, two years later, Deshpande had managed to raise Rs 60 lakh and gift a new school to the kids of Pandhari. Today, the Zilla Parishad school is home to nearly 125 kids.