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About Backyard Pyar
In Search of Connectedness
Sima Thakkar, Founder/Creator
When Sima was a kid, her favorite commercial was a Volkswagen ad where a group of friends pulls up to a party, sees the chaos inside, and without a word chooses a different path—driving on beneath a quiet, starry sky. That choice of skipping the noise and look for something more meaningful stayed with her.
Backyard Pyar was born from that spirit. It’s a community for South Asians who don’t always fit the mold. A place where we gather around music and nature. Where we slow down, step outside the rush, and find connection that feels real.
Sima brings that same spirit to everything she does. She founded goodindiangirl.com, recently graduated from Harvard Kennedy School, and is lovingly known by friends as the “other Sima Auntie.” With a later-in-life perspective, she’s helping shape a new kind of gathering.
Backyard Pyar is about rediscovering the beauty of simplicity, and reminding ourselves—together—that the most meaningful connections happen when we slow down.
Sonya Sonya, Program Director
Backyard Pyar is a natural home for Sonya, who has always been drawn to spaces that bring people together in wonder and connection. Her love for the outdoors began in Southern California, raised by the ocean waves, and now extends to time on rural farms in the Himalayas.
She lives in Brooklyn, but her dreams are rooted in Urdu ghazals and Punjabi mustard fields. A writer-activist, community organizer, and interior designer, Sonya is most proudly the descendant of Indian women freedom fighters.
From Bolivia to Uganda, she’s worked alongside youth activists—her greatest teachers—and created workshops like participatory policymaking through poetry for formerly incarcerated youth. As a writer, she explores decolonized dreams, diasporic longing, South Asian textiles, Black–South Asian solidarity, and the injustices of the prison system.
A graduate and research fellow at Harvard University, Sonya has worked across Kashmir, India, and Nepal, reconnecting with her multi-hyphenated diasporic identities and ancestral histories of partition.
Sonya is a natural community builder and looks forward to bringing meaning to everything we do together onsite.