7-year-old’s art to be on Google homepage

Greater Noida resident Varsha Gupta's doodle was chosen from among 1,55,000 entries for display on Children's Day

7-year-old's art to be on Google homepage

Greater Noida resident Varsha Gupta's doodle was chosen from among 1,55,000 entries for display on Children's Day

It took her barely 30 minutes to draw a doodle for Google, but it will now be featured on the homepage of the search engine on Children's Day. Greater Noida-resident Varsha Gupta, a class III student from Ryan International School, was chosen among the 1,55,000 entries from all over India for the third Doodle4Google competition.

Quick draw:u00a0 Jennifer Hom (doodler), Varsha (winner), Varsha's father
and Rajan Anandan of Google India). (Above) The winning doodle.

Seven-year-old Varsha's winning doodle was titled 'Indian Musical Instruments'. Varsha said, "I discussed it with my mother and grandmother and both of them are into music. In India, music plays a very important role. India has given many musical instruments to the world. Goddess Saraswati plays veena, Lord Shiva plays damru.

According to our mythological stories, musical instruments were played on all occasions. Even during a war, instruments were played. Lord Krishna's flute is known in the whole world for its magical music. In modern days, Zakir Hussain is world famous as tabla maestro and Pandit Shiv Kumar Sharma is known as the great santoor player all over the world."

The competition was open to all students from class I-X. This year, participants were to give their own version of the Google logo based on the theme 'India's gift to the world'. "I am overjoyed to see that my daughter has won the completion and the world will see her art work. Initially, we thought it would be difficult to make it to the top. I have never been so happy. I want her to pursue her passion for art," said Hoti Lal Gupta, Varsha's father.

(D)oodles of talent
Selecting the national winner was a mammoth task for the judges. Submitted doodles were short-listed by partner art schools from across India and 6,000 doodles entered the quarter-final round. Faculty from the Sir JJ School of Arts then short-listed 600 doodles that made it to the semi-final round. A panel of judges, including Prasoon Joshi, Nandita Das and artist Ganga Kadakia, picked the 45 finalists.

"Students are very creative and even we had a tough time selecting the best of the beautiful doodles. Seeing their talent, I feel soon we will be out of our jobs," said Jennifer Hom, from Google's doodle team, who chose the winning doodle.