Deepika
Arun
Educator. Storyteller.
Champion & Advocate of Screen-Free Childhood.
A software engineer turned educator, Deepika has spent over a decade building spaces, stories, and systems that help children grow into emotionally intelligent, curious, grounded human beings.
Childhood is moving onto a screen
Tap the screen below, and reimagine childhood.
childhood feels now.
Where children remember how to be children
Founded in 2016 in Nanganallur, Chennai — a screen-free after-school space where children aged 5–16 are encouraged to simply be children.
When every centre rushed online, Deepika chose to pause rather than compromise, designing offline, daily socio-emotional activities for families instead. Widely covered, widely respected.
Mixed ages, on purpose. Here, boredom isn't a problem to solve. It's the beginning of creativity.
Tamil for little ears
Deepika built Chittu Kuruvi as a meaningful alternative to screens: stories, rhymes, riddles and tongue-twisters that delight children while growing their Tamil, all through listening.
Play is serious learning
Board games are some of childhood's most powerful learning tools. Around the board, children practise focus and patience, think a few moves ahead, learn to win gracefully and lose well, and connect face to face instead of screen to screen. Deepika brought Pallanguzhi and traditional Indian games back to Jhoola when most children knew only video games, growing a club of 250+ titles where play does the teaching. One of her own creations sits proudly in that club:
The world's first card game based on a Tamil novel. Deepika designed this Chola-era strategy game herself, turning the epic Ponniyin Selvan into hands-on play — the same instinct for learning-through-play that runs through everything at Jhoola.
The conversations schools don't have
Deepika brings her expertise to crafting the conversations parents rarely get to have: emotional intelligence, screen time, reading and children's mental health, shaping each episode for Brigade Schools.
She's involved end to end — writing the script and conversation flow for each episode, then carrying it through post-production and marketing.
Building what schools don't teach
Emotional Intelligence (EI) curriculum · 9–13 · rooted in Indian philosophy▾
Designed and refined over multiple cohorts at Jhoola, weaving social-emotional learning into everyday activities rather than standalone lessons.
Life skills for early childhood · 5–8▾
Builds independence, empathy and decision-making through play-based modules for early learners.
Teacher training & professional development▾
Workshops for educators on running screen-free, child-led spaces — translating Jhoola's approach into a transferable method.
Curriculum consulting & building▾
Advises schools and centres on building offline, EI-rooted programming from the ground up.
The work, as others have seen it
