Kuku and his kids – all 155 of them

Apr 24, 2013 – Sometimes frocks can lead you to a great story.

It’s true. It’s happened to me. (And I now have ammunition every time my husband points out that I might not actually need a new dress). It’s a story that brings together desperation and hope, poverty and compassion, and boundless love.

It all began with my quest for a formal dress, back in 2010. Rather than brave the malls, I crowdsourced for some names of tailors, and rang the first one on the list: Kuku Arora. Kuku caters mostly to New Delhi’s expat European population, making sports coats and linen suits and sensible shift dresses and ball gowns and whatever else. His office is in a narrow lane in Saidalajaub, one of Delhi’s many charmingly atmospheric urban villages. As we sat on the sofa discussing fabrics and cuts, I could hear the hubbub of dozens of young children clearly through a thin partition. I didn’t give it much thought until, as I was leaving, Kuku asked politely whether I’d like to drop by and say hello to “his children”. I was a little mystified: he couldn’t be older than 40, just how many kids had this man fathered?

kuku&kidsBut as it turns out, Kuku was not the smiling polygamist I was imagining. Rather, he had taken custodianship of scores of local slum children. He and his wife provided for them and cared for them: while they slept at home with their parents, each morning, they would travel to Kuku’s building, bathe, eat, change clothes, and be schooled. Some of them went to school elsewhere, some had landed apprenticeships, some were working in jobs that actually offered them some prospects beyond begging.

His quest had begun with just one little girl, a toddler at the time. She had just one hand, and Kuku started bringing her food to eat each day. Eventually he went and met her parents to see what could be done to help her; and a couple of hours later, found himself having agreed to look after a dozen-odd children, incapable of looking into their pleading eyes and say no.

His is a grassroots operation; while he was tight-lipped on how he could afford it, it was clear that it was at the expense of the trappings of a comfortable middle-class Delhi existence. I spent an hour listening to the kids read proudly from their English books, and then left, vowing Kuku that one day I would do a story on him. Fast forward a year and a bit, and I finally had an ideal opportunity: each week, US news publication the Christian Science Monitor profiles a Person Making a Difference around the world, and Kuku’s story made the cut.

Read more here.

Since publication, Kuku’s charity has been recognised as an official NGO.