Celina gifted painting worth 10 lakh

By: Upala KBR, Mid-Day
Friday, December 08, 2006
Stars often receive unusual gifts from people, but Celina Jaitly got the shock of her life when she received a painting worth Rs 10 lakh from Kolkata-based painter, Wasim Kapoor, recently. The 3x2 ft painting depicts Celina in a traditional outfit, inspired from one of her photo shoots. When Kapoor saw the picture, he knew he had found his muse.

Says Celina, "The painting came as a very pleasant surprise. The look that he painted was something we had created just for a lark. Most people have seen me in urban attire, so we thought of shooting me in period look. The picture was appreciated, but when an artiste of Mr Wasim Kapoor's caliber paints you, it's a compliment on another level altogether."

Nawabi thaat

Says Kapoor about his muse, "I saw this picture of Celina in a traditional outfit in an Umrao Jaan-like pose in a newspaper and loved it. She looked very nawabi and traditional and looked better than Aishwarya Rai in Umrao Jaan. The film was like an insult to the people of Lucknow, and there is no comparison to the original Umrao Jaan (directed by Muzaffar Ali).

My father, Salik Lucknowi, is a leading Urdu poet and I have learnt a lot from him. The new Umrao Jaan had nothing of the culture, the Lucknowi ada, language, acting or dancing style like the earlier one. In short, everything was missing."

Wasim's paintings sell for upwards of Rs 10 lakh, and he says that if he were to auction Celina's portrait, it would definitely have fetched him a good price. "But I'd rather gift it to her."

For posterity

Wasim's next painting is a 7x6 ft painting of Amitabh Bachchan called Great Expectations, which shows the Big B interacting with street children. When it's complete, Kapoor plans to auction it. He says, "The painting was done since Mr Bachchan is the brand ambassador of UNICEF. The auction price will start at Rs 50 lakh and the proceeds will be distributed among different children's organisations."

Earlier, Kapoor had painted Madhuri Dixit. "Not just her, I painted a series of 60 paintings called Shades of Time, featuring famous actresses through the decades. "The series include paintings of Devika Rani, Meena Kumari, Hema Malini, Zeenat Aman, Konkana Sen Sharma, Madhuri Dixit, Sridevi and Bipasha Basu, to name a few."