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Timeless Portraits of Love
The cause is noble – to educate a girl child; the initiator is passionate in his purpose – Khushii, a Delhi-based NGO that works for the upliftment of poor and destitute communities in rural and urban India, primarily by providing high quality education and means of livelihood; the participants were the 125 celebrities,
The cause is noble – to educate a girl child; the initiator is passionate in his purpose – Khushii, a Delhi-based NGO that works for the upliftment of poor and destitute communities in rural and urban India, primarily by providing high quality education and means of livelihood; the participants were the 125 celebrities, who, along with their daughters posed for the eminent photographers Dabboo Ratnani, Jatin Kampani and Amit Pasricha for a finely produced coffee table book.
Chiranjeevi and Mahesh Babu amongst the many celebrities who posed with their daughters for a coffee table book published by Khushii NGO, to help fund the education of girl child
Industrialists, film actors, artists, musicians, spiritual Guru, politicians – celebrities from all walks of life chipped in with their funding for the project. Chiranjeevi and Mahesh Babu, Kiran Divi, Vikram Kirloskar, Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev, Javed Akhtar and several others looked content and happy as they were captured on frame with their daughters for the book aptly titled, ‘Timeless Portraits of Love’.
Khushii was founded by cricketer Kapil Dev in 2002. The NGO runs around 5000 schools (Sikhshantra) and raises funds to educate, provide mid-day meal and buy uniform for the economically challenged children. It uses its resources and contacts with celebrities and artists to raise funds for the same, and in addition, also supports several other NGOs who run schools.
Amongst the various fund raising initiatives was ‘India on Canvas’ that was held in December 2015, when a celebrity painted along with a renowned artist that had Satish Gupta paint along with Shahrukh Khan and Chintan Upadhyay along with industrialist Amit Kalyani. Around 100 of celebrity guests were on board and the works were auctioned at the British High Commissioner’s residence in New Delhi.
What works for Khushii are not just the right connections. The team at the NGO works towards coming up with out of the box ideas to make it exciting and interesting each time – after all fund raising is the biggest challenge for any NGO. Vivek Khushalani, president shares, “We took 7 months from the time of conceptualisation to complete the coffee table book.
It was a whirlwind affair for us. We will be releasing the book on April 24 at Bikaner House. On the occasion, we will also be having a small auction of art pieces exclusively done for us by various artists, designers etc. The artworks to be auctioned include a wing chair designed by Varun Bahl.
Venkat Bothsa’s beautiful large 78 inch panther- very artistic and majestic, Sunil Padwal’s acrylic work on teak wood dining table and bench and SH Raza’s diamond pendant, Ranbir Kaleka’s mixed media installation of gramophone records, Paresh Maity’s horse heads, among others.”
Vivek hopes that more and more people get to know of Khushii and support the organisation in its endeavours. “Even at individual level, one can help by adopting a child. All one needs to do is donate Rs 12,000 towards the education, a day’s meal and uniform. We send a quarterly report card of the well being and performance of the child – and it creates a certain attachment between the child and the donor,” he relates.
By: Rajeshwari Kalyanam
