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Her Tears, Moved Him to Do Something Like Nothing He Had Ever Done!

It was the tears that forced Sushobhan Mukherjee's hand. Sarita Devi Laishram had fought her heart out in the semi-finals of the 57-60 Kg boxing competition at the Incheon Asian Games, against the South Korean fighter Ji Na Park. Yet, as she stood by the podium to collect her bronze, Sarita could not stem the free flow of tears. She believed, along with about 1.2 billion Indians, that she had been robbed of a possible gold due to biased refereeing.

Sushobhan, a marketing and advertising professional based in Singapore, had not seen the bout. Nor had he witnessed  Sarita's meltdown during the medal ceremony. However, when twitter lit up with an angry explosion of messages, he was moved to look. First at the match and then at the dramatic medal ceremony, where Sarita Devi accepted her bronze medal only to put it around the neck of her Korean opponent.



That moment he decided something needed to be done, "something substantial and meaningful. Because, I knew Sarita Devi's career was finished. There was no way she was going to survive that. I read up about her background and realized she came from a very poor family. Boxing is all they had. So I decided to try and raise some money for her. It seemed a much better thing to do, than simply vent my anger with a tweet or a FB post."

Timing, Sushobhan realized, was everything. Sarita's meltdown happened on October 1st, a day after her semifinal bout. October 2nd was the beginning of a long weekend in India. A big chunk of his target demographic would be away during that time. He, and his partner Sangita Sridhar, moved fast. First getting through to Milaap.org. Sushobhan knew the founder of the crowd funding platform for social causes so the normal formalities for setting up a campaign were set aside. Milaap also waived its fees so Sarita Devi got most of whatever was raised.

When the campaign went online, Sushobhan had not even contacted Sarita Devi. But as he explained on the fund raising page, he was confident of reaching out to her through his contacts in Manipur and in sports. They eventually did manage to reach her husband who gave them the bank details to transfer the funds to.

The campaign went live on October 1st 2014. Sushobhan and Sangita promoted it via their personal social media contacts. The money came in, along with the skepticism. "Why are you raising money for Sarita," one asked, "did she ask you to?" Another felt it was an insult to raise money for Sarita Devi. Many others doubted if the money would actually reach Sarita Devi. Here Milaap's credibility helped. The organisation held the funds raised and only transferred them direct to Sarita Devi's account after verifying that it was indeed her account.

Meanwhile, things were moving fast in Incheon as well. The Asian Games federation, the Indian Olympic and Boxing associations, and the International Boxing Association all put pressure on the boxer to apologize for her behavior and accept her medal. Even her more celebrated senior partner Mary Kom, publicly criticized Sarita for her actions on the podium.

Sarita caved. She unconditionally apologized and accepted her medal. With that done, Sushobhan knew the campaign had run its course. The moment had passed. The two days of hectic fund raising and parlaying naysayers had netted a total of Rs 1,68,862. Not a small amount considering the duration of the campaign, or the low key promotion it got.

This money would eventually reach Sarita direct from Milaap. She would also be banned by the International Boxing Association for a year for her tantrum. She is still serving the ban.

Meanwhile, the two days left Sushobhan feeling positive about his ability to make real change. He has set his sights on an ambitious project that will go online in May this year. He now wants to help girls in remote areas of India have easier access to schools. He believes giving them bicycles will increase both their mobility and their upward mobility. He believes he can use social media for real change. He believes anyone with a passion can make a difference. Most importantly he believes one person can make a difference. And he is going to continue doing so.

How Indu Became the "Viral Boobs Lady"

If Indu Harikumar had her way she should have left for London to do an expensive art course back in 2010. Instead, she got rejected because of a silly mistake in her application form. She would have to wait six months before she could reapply.

Indu with her students in Ladhak. She had volunteered at a nunnery in 2014 and part of her duties included teaching these kids art and creativity.

With time on her hands, she started teaching an art class on a construction site in Mumbai. The voluntary organisation she worked for could not provide her with much in the way of art resources. So she innovated. Indu would pick up leaves, bottle caps, match boxes, anything that could help her create beautiful art with the kids. She also began blogging about it. She says "I did not really think anyone read my blog or followed by twitter posts as I had so few followers, but Pratham books (a not-for profit publisher of children's literature) did. And they began tweeting about my classes every Thursday."

Indu's created many of these match box books. She's even trained kids to do these. She would post all of this work onto her different social media accounts, just to share her creativity with friends.

That was Indu's first experience with the power of social media. Those early tweets by Pratham led to a book cover and an invitation from Bookaroo (a festival of Children's literature) "to work with children because of my match box books. I was even invited to give a talk at the Kala Ghoda arts festival. I remember thinking at that time that these things happen to people who went to big design school, not someone sent to a "drawing class" by her parents."

It also led to her first book deal. Children's publisher Katha Books asked her to illustrate Sarojini Naidu's poem the Palanquin Bearers using cloth. This is one of the illustrations that made it to the book.

Her success spurred Indu to set up a Facebook page. But, she admitted to not being a social media maven."Sure, I put up my work and travel photos. I also share a lot of personal stuff on FB. But I don't do anything to build up membership or followers. I have never tried to build an email list. I am busy with my projects and I just use Facebook and Instagram to share what I do." 

If by now you're wondering what a children's writer has to do with viral boobs, you are about to find out. One of  Indu's projects was a book on her ancestor who resided in 18th century Kerala. He had an interesting story and she wanted to tell it. While researching the period, Indu came across a stunning fact. There was a rather unusual tax system imposed on lower caste women in the state. She had to write about it. This is what she put up on her Facebook page:

"Last night, I was drawing the family comic for the nth time when I started reading about Mulakaram or breast tax. A tax to be paid by Dalit women in Travancore in 1800s, depending on the size of their breasts. I knew that low caste women couldn't cover their bosom but didn't know about this tax or Nangeli. Since everything can't go into the comic, I decided to draw this."

The response to the post was ballistic. Indu used to get a couple of thousand views on her page and a few shares. But look what happened post the boob post.

The post went up on Jan 20th. In the four days following she got calls from two television stations and a women's magazine wanting to profile her work. She also came to be referred to as the "viral boobs" lady. Strangers calling her with requests to turn their lifelong collection of cassettes, matchboxes and sundry other items into works of art and even an art student wanting to intern with her.

She had to turn down the intern, because in a beautiful twist of fate, Indu leaves for Vienna in a couple of months for an art residency. She gets to spend time learning from and teaching other artists and story tellers in one of Europe's most beautiful cities.

I believe Indu's social media success has more to it than boobs. She followed her heart. Created beautiful things and beautiful stories. She focused her energies on doing what she does best. She does not think too much about what works or does not work on social media. She thinks about beauty, about artistry and about story telling. Social media has ensured that she herself has become a story worth telling.