How a piece of donated jewellery during 2015 floods led to recreating Ravi Varma paintings

It was during the devastating 2015 Chennai floods that actor Suhasini Maniratnam, also the founder of Naam Charitable Trust that works to empower single women from under-privileged communities, recalls volunteering along with city-based NGO Bhoomika Trust. “We were donating rice bags to the affected and realised that we needed more money than we had imagined for the relief operations. That was when a jeweller from Mumbai gave us a piece of jewellery. We wondered how a piece of jewellery could help during the crisis, but over time, we ended up collecting a total of 25 pieces of jewellery from jewellers across Chennai, which were auctioned to raise funds. During the auction held in 2016, we decided to have a fashion show, wherein a few women dancers and actors like Gopika Varma and Priyadarshini Govind, Khushbu and Lakshmi Manchu were dressed taking inspiration from Raja Ravi Varma’s paintings. Carnatic music was sung live by Bombay Jayashri,” recollects Suhasini, speaking to DT Next.

Celebrity photographer G Venket Ram, who had then captured a few images of these women, finished the calendar after four years, the actor-director notes. It features a total of 12 women — actors Khushbu, Shruti Haasan, Ramya Krishnan, Aishwarya Rajesh, Samantha Akkineni, Nadhiya, Lissy and dancers Shobhana, Priyadarshini Govind. Also featured is 33-year-old Chamundeshwari, a Naam Charitable Trust’s beneficiary. “I have been asking Venket to finish the calendar for a long time. We finally got around to finishing it. The funds raised from the calendar will go towards medical screening of the single women, as they hardly take care of their health, as well as towards school fees of all their children. We need at least Rs 20-lakh a year to run an NGO like ours. The printing and production costs for the calendar was Rs 10 lakh,” shares Suhasini.

Ravi Varma (1848-1906), who was related to the royal family of Travancore, explored several dimensions of women through his paintings, she remarks. “He understood royalty, and also painted his own daughter, mother-in-law and women working in the fields. His paintings depict that a woman is ageless and timeless,” Suhasini asserts on why his work became an inspiration.

For Venket Ram, posting one of the images shot during the 2016 auction event on social media was enough to draw him back to finishing the project. “I had posted the image of Khushbu’s, which went viral. We had finalised which actors we would shoot for the calendar and had to find the right jewellery, props, costumes to recreate the paintings. While the paintings depicted silk sarees flowing freely, it was a Herculean task to recreate it, and to find such soft silks. Ravi Varma had his own interpretation of women in the paintings, which was challenging to create in real life. For instance, it was very difficult to replicate his painting of Damayanti (recreated by Ramya Krishnan), as the body proportions were the painter’s imagination,” admits the lensman.

Even though most of the paintings chosen were naturally bright, Venket Ram says he had to make do with artificial light to give off a similar effect in his photographs. “Artists were always an inspiration to me. So, this was an experimental process for me. Since we were doing the project for an NGO and for a good cause, all the actors readily agreed. It was a project filled with warmth, as Suhasini would get coffee and tea from home each day while we worked,” he adds.