Saba Hasan at the Kilkari Rainbow Home for girls

Kilkari Rainbow home for girls is located in a heritage building near Kashmere Gate in Old Delhi. The walls are feet deep and the ceilings high.  Saba Hasan led this project with grace and sensitivity, building up a great rapport and making a strong positive impression on the girls. She first met some of them at her own exhibition in Lalit Kala Akademi several months before the painting began. There they enjoyed seeing her work and chatting over chai outside.  When we came to Kilkari every girl wanted to paint and it was a hard task for home leader Rashmi to select  a group of senior artists from among them.   Soon the walls of the girls' two bedrooms were covered in aqua blue and the young team conceived (overnight, on their own) a lovely scheme for a landscape set into an alcove and a peacock and two vases bursting with flowers arranged around the mantlepiece.  Other details followed: portraits, more flowers and animals.   To inspire them Saba shared lots of pictures of Indian miniatures.  In the end the fireplace looked like an exquisite interior from a Rajasthani Haveli.