Paper Flowers: What We Do With the Time We Are Given
A new film explores the legacy left behind following a PCV's battle with cancer
Some lives are measured in years. Others are measured by what they leave behind.
For Shalin Shah, a young Indian American whose Peace Corps journey was interrupted almost as soon as it began, time would become painfully limited. But Paper Flowers, a feature-length independent film inspired by his true story, is not primarily interested in how Shalin died. It asks audiences to consider something much more difficult – and ultimately more hopeful: How did he choose to live?
After graduating from the University of Southern California, Shalin traveled to Peru in 2015 to begin training with the Peace Corps. Service was not an unexpected turn in his life. Those who knew him remembered someone who had long been drawn toward helping others. The Peace Corps gave that instinct a place to grow.
But just as Shalin was preparing to formally begin his service, everything changed.
After roughly two months of training in Peru, he was approaching his swearing-in ceremony when doctors discovered a lump that required him to return to the United States. Shalin resisted leaving. He wanted to stay with the community and the people he had come to know. Eventually, he returned home and was diagnosed with synovial sarcoma, a rare form of cancer.
His Peace Corps service had been interrupted. His commitment to service had not.
That distinction lies at the heart of a new film about Shalin’s journey, Paper Flowers.
“Cancer didn’t create Shalin’s desire to serve,” Asit Vyas, Shalin’s relative and one of the filmmakers behind Paper Flowers stated. “It just revealed just how deeply that desire was already part of him.”
Even from a hospital bed, Shalin continued thinking about others. When a friend he had made in Peru considered leaving the Peace Corps, Shalin encouraged him to stay. Back at the University of Southern California, he helped with efforts encouraging other students to consider Peace Corps service. His influence reached even closer to home: his girlfriend, Francis Chen, who would later become his wife, was inspired by Shalin to become a Peace Corps Volunteer herself.
And Shalin eventually got the ceremony he had missed.
Then-Peace Corps Director Carrie Hessler-Radelet traveled from Washington, D.C. to Los Angeles to personally administer his swearing-in. For a man whose formal overseas service had been measured in months rather than years, it was a recognition that impact cannot always be measured by a calendar.
“The value of service is not measured by how long you serve,” Vyas said, “but by what you give while you have the opportunity.”
Learning to Live
Shalin would later write an essay with a startling title: “Thank You, Cancer.”
The words could easily have led Paper Flowers toward becoming a story about illness and loss. The filmmakers deliberately resisted that framing.
“We never wanted cancer to become Shalin’s identity,” Vyas explained. Cancer creates urgency in the story, he said, but the film itself is about “love, gratitude, family, service, and living fully.”
For filmmaker Mahesh Pailoor, that became the project’s “north star.” The paradox at the center of Shalin’s life was that a terminal diagnosis forced him to confront death, yet what emerged was a lesson about how to live.
One image in particular helped the filmmakers capture that idea.
Shalin loved watching sunsets. He would often pause just to take them in, as if each one mattered – because to him, it did. That simple habit became a quiet emotional thread in the film, a reminder of presence, attention, and gratitude in ordinary moments.
Pailoor recalled that sunsets became a recurring theme throughout the film, reflecting Shalin’s appreciation for the time he was given. For him, it was never about how many sunsets a person gets to see, but the meaning and impact created in the time between them.
“We’re not guaranteed the next day,” Pailoor said. “Our impact can be in the now.”
For returned Peace Corps Volunteers, that idea may feel familiar. Service does not necessarily end with a flight home. The relationships, empathy, and sense of responsibility developed abroad can continue shaping a Volunteer’s life, and the lives of the people around them—for decades to come.
Making Paper Flowers changed the filmmakers’ own understanding of that experience. Vyas said he once thought of the Peace Corps largely as Americans traveling abroad to help. Through Shalin, he came to understand it as something more reciprocal: living within another community, listening, learning, forming relationships, and allowing yourself to be changed in the process.
“Service requires humility,” he said.
Pailoor saw the same pattern among returned Volunteers he encountered: Peace Corps service continued influencing their careers, relationships, and ways of seeing other people long after their time abroad ended.
That continuing ripple of service is visible even in the making of Paper Flowers. While researching Shalin’s time in Peru, Pailoor contacted returned Peace Corps Volunteer Alex Brauer to better understand the experience. Brauer shared photographs he had taken while serving in the same area of Peru. Those images eventually became part of the film, helping visually tell Shalin’s story.
Taking Paper Flowers Beyond the Screen
Now Shalin’s story is beginning another journey.
Paper Flowers opens theatrically across the United States on August 21, with the filmmakers describing the release as nationwide and supported through AMC Independent. Members of the filmmaking team plan to participate in screenings and Q&As in Alexandria, Virginia; Los Angeles; the San Francisco Bay Area; San Diego; and Cincinnati.
But they do not want the theatrical release to be the story’s endpoint.
The team is inviting Peace Corps groups and other communities to participate in what they call an Impact Screening series, with plans for in-person or virtual screenings around the world. Depending on the event, members of Shalin’s family, Francis, or the filmmakers may participate in conversations and Q&As afterward.
“This is not the end of our journey,” Vyas said. “This is the beginning.”
That may be particularly fitting for a film about the idea that service does not end simply because circumstances change.
Not everyone can join the Peace Corps, Vyas acknowledged. But everyone can serve. It might mean volunteering in another country, but it can also mean helping someone in your neighborhood, repairing a relationship, reconnecting with someone you love, or finding another way to make life better for the people immediately around you.
“If someone walks out of Paper Flowers and calls someone they love, volunteers somewhere, forgives someone, or simply becomes more grateful for another day,” Vyas said, “that to me is success.”
Shalin may not have known how many sunsets he had left, but he made a point of appreciating each one
If he could see his story reaching audiences today, Vyas believes his message would be simple:
“Love deeply, be grateful, serve others…and don’t wait for a crisis to start living.”
Shalin could not choose how much time he was given.
But Paper Flowers reminds us that all of us can choose what we do with ours.
