Capturing Smiles
02 March 2015

An event for the inmates of Poor Home, Westhill
Sponsor : Divya Raveendran & Anoop Divakaran (Melbourne, Australia)

Abandoned in the twilight of life, 30 souls in an Old Age Home at Westhill, Kozhikode very rarely find a reason to smile. So we thought to have a chat with them, make them smile, capture that moment, frame the photo and gift it to them. Just to keep reminding them that they still have a face which can smile. A humble attempt to bring in some sort of positive energy to those lives. An event sponsored by Divya & Anoop, who studied in the same locality, one and half decade back. At the same Poor home, where they used to visit during their college days in Westhill Polytechnic.

Poor Home Society is one of the very oldest philanthropic institutions in Kerala. It was established in 1930s by a great visionary named Sri. KN..Kurup who gave away acres of his land for ensuring shelter to the under-privileged. The eminent freedom fighter A.V.Kuttimalu Amma was its administrator and during her time, Jawaharlal Nehru had visited this place. A nostalgic snap of Nehru along with Kuttimaluamma is still hanging there on the wall. Today the society is being administered by some prominent Gandhians in the city.

Photographer Bhuvachand was so happy to associate with this event & he clicked some of the best snaps in the lifetime of these grandpas & grandmas. Volunteers of Arm of Joy, Rekha, Sarin & Sourabhya chatted with the inmates and during these informal conversations, the photographer clicked the smiling faces of inmates.

We printed the group photo in size 17’’ x 30’’ and framed it. Individual snaps were also printed in size 12’’ x 8’’ for framing. All photos were printed & framed in just one day’s time and we then went again to Poor Home on Mar 3rd, for gifting the same to the inmates.

They were stunned to see their beautiful snaps. Itz tough to narrate the excitement that we could create by gifting these photographs. A small but priceless gift, for each one of them… Let the smiles prevail…