Karishma graduated from college in 2001 in Bombay with a B.A in English Literature. She worked as a documentary film maker in Bombay before moving to Mallorca for a year to work for acclaimed production company – Palma Pictures. Upon her return to Bombay, Karishma worked at boutique film production company Highlight Films as a Production Assistant. She transitioned from there to blueFROG, a live music venture based in Bombay. She was the first employee of blueFROG and was involved in executing the launch of its flagship music club in Bombay which was later rated by the Independent (UK) as one of the top ten music venues in the world. In 2014, Karishma and Simran formed Mach One Associates and later Project Rangeet with Priyanka where she works on the confluence of music, design, education and technology.
Albert Einstein said, “Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”
I was that fish in school, I felt judged based on my inability to cope academically and in a classroom of friends I was lost and alone. To this day I’m scarred with feelings of inadequacy.
This is what my inequitable classroom left me with and I co-founded Project Rangeet to fill children with hope, children like 13 year old me.
I often question my purpose on this planet? How can I make an impact? I just may have found it through the work we do at Project Rangeet. I see the world in pictures, colours, designs. How many other children out there are like me? How can I make them feel like they matter enough and belong in a classroom? How can I make them feel like their intelligence is just as beautiful as their classmates who excel at math? And finally, how do I enable teachers to rediscover the reason they became teachers in the first place: to know that one child breathed easier or felt like they belonged because of them.