Kalabai’s half-hearted smile reveals missing teeth. The 48-year-old runs a hand through her short, more-salt-than-pepper hair and puts out her palm for the chocolate being handed out, which she promptly hides in her pocket. Beside her, 65-year-old Kumari also extends her hand for the day’s treat, repeating “Ai” — mother. It’s the only word she speaks.About 50 women occupy the long, wooden U-shaped table, waiting their turn for the chocolate. All wear the same red-and-blue check uniform. Most are grey-haired, many have gnarled hands and vacant eyes. All are mentally challenged.This is the Carmichael CMC Educational Society for Mentally Deficient Girls in Shirur. Only there are no girls here. Of its 50 inmates, 49 are adult women between 35 and 75.Two hundred kilometres away, at Mankhurd in Mumbai, age is also a technicality. Khalid may be past 65, but has lost none of his impishness. He cocks his head, closes his eyes, and nods like Rajesh Khanna: “I am the original one, he was my duplicate,” before breaking into a smile that deepens his wrinkles. Salt-and-pepper-haired Salman (50), in a neatly ironed shirt and pant, bustles about carrying files, revelling in his role as “the most efficient office boy.” Sonam (40) breaks into a melodious Saare Jahaan Se Achcha on request, twiddling her plaits.These are inmates of The Children and Society Home for the Mentally Deficient at Mankhurd — recently renamed the APJ Abdul Kalam Divyang Mulanche Bhavan — where again the one thing most conspicuously absent is childhood. Of its 280 inmates, almost 95% are adults. In fact only 24 boys and 17 girls are under 18. The rest are well past 18 – some as old as 75.The pattern repeats across all 12 government-aided institutes for mentally challenged children in Maharashtra. All are filled to capacity, mostly with residents who entered as children and, having nowhere else to go, simply stayed — through adulthood, and now old age.At the Gopala Shikshan Sanstha in Amravati, last year’s data from the Women and Child WelfareCommission shows all 60 approved residents — 20 men, 40 women — were above 18. Of the 200 seats collectively available in shelter homes for mentally challenged children in Satara, Dhule, Solapur and Osmanabad, almost 270 were occupied by adult men and women.Story continues below this adMankhurd admits two categories of minors: those in conflict with law, and those needing care and protection — street children, the missing, the abandoned. All of these are mentally disabled, admitted between ages 6 and 18. For most orphaned children, institutional care ends at 18. For the mentally challenged, it doesn’t. “Chronologically they age, but mentally they remain the same — sometimes 10 years old,” staff say. So the Child Welfare Committee simply issues fresh orders each year, keeping residents on “until their last day.”Set up in 1941 with 100 seats, the Mankhurd institution now houses close to 280 on a four-acre campus built for 350. Every resident has a personal file, reassessed every six months. Six special educators teach vocational skills — toran-making, paper bags, Diwali jewellery — displayed at exhibitions.A psychologist manages depression, hyperactivity and aggression, common in a population few families visit. Days follow a fixed rhythm: bath, breakfast, medicines, school, lunch, workshop, tea, television, lights off by 9:30; eggs on Fridays, chicken on Sundays. Residents play sports and win medals — one girl recently returned from a tournament in Brazil, says principal Shalini Duri, with a tinge of pride.Both homes, coincidentally, have emerged from scandals that have rocked them in the past.Shirur made headlines for forced hysterectomies performed on inmates between 1993 and 1994; Mankhurd, for an alleged New Year’s Eve party in 2013 involving alcohol, dancers, and minor girls. Both have since seen staff changes and tighter management and inspections.Story continues below this adAt Shirur, the Carmelodaya CMC sisters took charge in 1997 for what began as a one-year trial. “Sister Dominic stayed 25 years and breathed life into the ravaged home,” says Sister Soumya, the present in-charge. “The scared, scarred girls are today women nurtured with love and empathy, who live with a sense of security.”The routine here includes, other than meals and hygiene, the making of handicrafts, games, gardening and exercise. The women also help in small jobs at the institute as per their choice. Kanta, 48, has an OCD about cleanliness and dusts voluntarily for hours. Manju, 50, tends the home’s pets. Savita has a way with plants.As seats fill with adults; children needing shelter are sometimes turned away. Neither Soumya nor Duri lets that unsettle them. As Duri puts it, the arithmetic of age was never really the point. Some residents have lived here longer than they lived anywhere else, grown old within the same four walls that once held them as children — and it is precisely that, not their years, which the women who run these homes choose to see. “Let’s not forget,” Duri says, “even at 70, they are all still children.”One look at Dolma, 35, whose mother left her four years ago “for a few days” and then blocked the home’s number, laughing on the seesaw or the pair of 50-year old twins sharing a sweet and the observation makes complete sense. And why sometimes sentiments must override systems.Story continues below this ad(Names of the inmates have been changed to maintain their privacy)