Dream wedding comes true

Lovedeep Sidhu

Every bride-to-be hopes to look the best on her wedding day, not all can afford it though. Good make-up comes with a hefty price tag. Likewise for wedding photography. Pre-wedding shoots and drone photography don’t come cheap either. But why should paucity of funds mar a bride’s dreams? Fulfilling them hence are Good Samaritans Saheel Qureshi, a makeup artiste from Chandigarh, and Veeresh Pathania, a photographer from Himachal.

Qureshi, a makeup artiste who runs a salon in Chandigarh, travels across the country to not just honour his professional commitments, but to also help brides who wouldn’t have otherwise been able to pay for his skills.

The 39-year-old has been in the beauty industry for the past 23 years. Born in Lal Chowk, Srinagar, to a journalist father and teacher mother, he started out young after losing most material possessions to destruction that befell them as a result of violence in the state. While still enrolled as a student of fashion design in Jammu, he began to test his makeup skills on others. “My father being a scribe and two elder sisters who became radio jockeys, I’d been exposed to the world of television and multimedia early on. This is perhaps what fuelled my interest in beautifying people. There was a need to be financially independent, so I dived in,” he shares.

Saheel insists that even before he had made it big, he wanted to contribute to the social milieu that he was a part of. Following the dictum of ‘do what you can with what you have, where you are’, he began to offer makeup services to girls from less privileged backgrounds on their wedding day. “I learnt from my parents that good karma is what makes the world go round. And, it all comes back. So, regardless of a girl’s economic status, if I can help her look her best on such an important and auspicious day of her life, I’ll only be too glad,” he says.

After completing his diploma in fashion design, Saheel went to Mumbai in the hope of making it big and never looked back.

“In 2017, a work opportunity brought me to Chandigarh. While that didn’t work out, I did end up opening my own salon — mostly with borrowed money. One of my employees’ sister was to get married and hiring a professional makeup artiste was a far-fetched dream for the family. I offered to do her makeup, as well as all pre-bridal hair and skin services. The smile of gratitude on her face was the gift I got in return,” he says.

Though Saheel works on glamming up famous faces, including Disha Patani, Sonam Kapoor, Deepika Padukone, Katrina Kaif, Bipasha Basu and various other film and TV stars, he doesn’t find it hard to take the time out to do social work. He now teaches makeup skills to the underprivileged free of cost.

Happiness in a frame

From capturing snow-capped mountains and blooming valleys to simple hill weddings, Kullu-based photographer Veeresh Pathania (see pic) has found many a muse to amuse his camera’s lens with. One of the three partners at Pixel Dhaba, a studio specialising in portraiture, short films, and portfolios, Pathania ventured into wedding photography six years ago when he stumbled upon a humble wedding in the hills and decided to shoot it free of cost. “It occurred to me that the girl deserved a professional photo album of her wedding as much as anyone else. After all, it’s a special day for every bride who’d love to treasure these memories for a lifetime,” says Pathania. Having covered three such weddings so far and spent many thousands of rupees from their pockets, Pathania and his team find the bride’s smile of gratitude most rewarding. “The first time that a new bride’s family came to pick up the photo album was a heart-warming moment. It’s something they hadn’t ever imagined they would be able to afford,” he says.