The actress has helped light up 40 households in Kikkeri village by putting her clothes on sale.
Bengaluru: Residents of Kikkeri, a small village in Karnataka, don’t know about Bollywood, but Alia Bhatt is still a star to them. A star that is helping them shine.
Widely credited as one of filmdom’s leading fashionistas, the 25-year-old actor is leveraging her style credentials to make a difference through a campaign known as ‘Mi Wardrobe is Su Wardrobe’, a play on the popular Spanish saying mi casa su casa or my house is your house.
As part of the initiative, launched earlier this year, personal items from Bhatt’s wardrobe were put on sale at a shopping event known as the Stylecracker Night Market.
Proceeds from the first such sale on 18 May were given to a Bengaluru-based NGO called Aroha, which installs solar lamps in villages with limited or erratic power supply.
Initially, Aroha did the ground work, but when the time came to handover the lamps to the villagers, Bhatt accompanied the Aroha team to Kikkeri. Eventually, the money collected from the sale of her personal items helped light up 40 households in the Mandya village, which has been in darkness for over 25 years.
Kikkeri came into existence more than 20 years ago as nearly 40 families, working in the local APMC yard, built hutments and started living there. They have been asking the local leaders to provide electricity, but their cries have gone in vain.
“We don’t know who Alia Bhatt is, we don’t watch movies. We don’t own television sets here. But then those people who came in a big car told us who she was. We are so happy that a person of her stature landed here personally to help us,” said Susheela, one of those who received the lamps.
“The local leaders, panchayat members, they all should be ashamed of themselves. She has done what they could not do,” she added.
Susheela’s neighbour Sahana, who works as a temporary staffer at the railway station, said she was glad to get rid of the regular expenditure kerosene lamps entailed. Two days’ supply of kerosene set her back by Rs 30, a princely sum for Sahana.
“How do you expect us to survive? Then there are the fumes from the lamp, which enter our nostrils and mouth and whatever we eat then tastes like kerosene,” she said.
Like Susheela, she had no clue who Bhatt was, and sheepishly deflected the question.
For 10-year-old Savita, the solar lamps have brought more playtime, as dusk will no longer serve as a natural deadline for homework, leaving her more time to hang out with friends.
When asked if she knew where the lamps came from, she said they were brought by “four people who came by in a white car, looked around and enquired about the state of their village”.
“They promised they will come back with light for our homes and they did that within a month,” said Savita.
Told that it was Alia Bhatt, a famous actress, who was at her doorstep, Savita smiled. It was playtime.