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Fighting cancer with philanthropy

Whether it's mobilising celebrities, individual donors or PSUs, Geeta Gopalakrishnan pulls out all the stops to raise funds for underprivileged cancer patients. Roshni Nair talks to the woman who is the driving force behind the fundraising efforts at Kolkata's Tata Memorial Centre

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Geeta Gopalakrishnan
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Geeta Gopalakrishnan tears up when recollecting her years at advertising firm Trikaya Grey, whose iconic founder Ravi Gupta lost his life to stomach cancer. It was also during this phase that a beloved friend and colleague succumbed to the illness within three months of diagnosis. That she'd witnessed, as a child, a relative "disappear into nothing" due to Hodgkin's lymphoma could well have set the ball rolling for the kind of work she does today. As did her cousin, who had Down's syndrome.

It's been just four years since Tata Memorial Center (TMC) was set up in Kolkata, but as its Honorary Director of Donor Relationships, Gopalakrishnan has been instrumental in inching towards the goal corpus of $50million. Half the facility's 150 beds are earmarked for the underprivileged, who receive either substantially-subsidised or free treatment. It's for them that she turned her dream of giving back to society – particularly to children – into a flair for philanthropy.

Almost 800-900 patients approach TMC each day. "Intestinal and head and neck cancers are most common. There are people who even need tongue replacements. You'll be shocked by what you see there," she says, relaying the time she saw a patient stuff his mouth with tobacco, since that was the only way he could deal with pain caused by oral cancer.

Philanthropy is as much about contacts as it is about charity, and here's where Gopalakrishnan has tapped into to make fundraisers a success. In the years following TMC's establishment, she organised everything from plays and fashion shows to marathons that had designers (Anamika Khanna, Krishna Mehta), film industry folk (Sharmila Tagore, Aparna Sen, Shabana Azmi, Javed Akhtar, Shahrukh Khan, Sonam Kapoor), artists (Paresh Maity, Jayasri Burman), sportsmen (Sourav Ganguly) and businesspeople (Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, Rakesh Jhunjhunwala, Shrikant Zaveri of TBZ) give weight to the cause she espouses.

But Gopalakrishnan is quick to underline public sector unit (PSU) contributions too. It's a misconception that PSU and corporate philanthropy can't have a symbiotic relationship, she says. Citing the example of the Premashraya facility, which offers free or subsidised housing to patients undergoing treatment at TMC, she continues: "Not many know Premashraya is funded by Coal India, which gave Rs44 crore for the cause. Indian Oil donated Rs66 crore. State Bank of India (SBI) contributed Rs6 crore for a machine. These PSUs didn't ask for anything in return – they didn't ask that a ward be named after them or that their name come in the papers."

It's the same with individual donors – the ones she reaches out to through her Dil Se Deejiye Dus Rupayyey campaign in Mumbai, for which shoppers at Croma, Westside and Landmark voluntarily add Rs10 to their bills for TMC. Gopalakrishnan also tied up with Asha Jhaveri of Swati Snacks and reached out to restaurateurs Anjan Chatterjee of Mainland China and AD and Sabina Singh to further the campaign. "Any money is a lot of money," she stresses, harking back to when she'd go on the field to collect funds for the SPJ Sadhana School for children with special needs.

Gopalakrishnan's current challenge is lack of manpower – especially since the plan is to take Dil Se Deejiye Dus Rupayyey to Kolkata (where she has a weekly radio show with 37 lakh listeners called Dil Se Direct) and Pune. Darshan Shah of Weavers Studio in the City of Joy is single-handedly promoting the campaign there, she shares.

But these are surmountable hurdles for a woman who'll be taking Dil Se Deejiye Dus Rupayyey to as far as the UK, where it will be known as 'Gift a Pound of Love'. Come September 27, it will be flagged off by none other than the mayor of London. Ask her whether altruism is on the wane these days, and she says, "I once went to Kanyakumari with friends. A pandit there welcomed us to his hut and fed us the best meal of our lives. Never underestimate the power of the common man. It's the common man who gives far more."

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