Abhishek Bachchan, Varun Dhawan, Guru Randhawa, Neha Dhupia, Celina Jaitly, Chris Gayle & AB De Villiers power the #Save Zeus campaign

Cricketers, Actors, Miss Indias, Rockstars & Influencers join in Zeus’ battle against cancer

Zeus Agastya Krishna Banerjee was 6 years old when he met one of India’s most entertaining stars, Varun Dhawan. A big fan of Varun’s inimitable style and street dancing skills, meeting the star himself was a dream come true. Zeus, now 11 is fighting against Acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). Zeus is unaware of his life-threatening condition and has been fighting the disease and its relapse for months.

Life is nothing but a collection of such moments and chance meetings that are cherished. For a star like Varun, it could have been just another fan moment, but the minute he heard of Zeus’ fight he recorded a video to cheer up the spirits of this fierce fighter. In the video posted on the Instagram page created for Zeus, @savezeus, Varun says, “Hey Zeus, sending you lots of love, I am sure you are going to get all your strength back soon and I can’t wait for you to get better so we can hang out.” Varun’s gesture is sure to be a ray of sunshine amidst the cloudy skies that loom over Zeus, his family, and friends.

He is not the only one. Abhishek Bachchan, Guru Randhawa, Celina Jaitly, Sehwag, Harsha Bhogle, the Yuvraj Singh powered foundation – YouWeCan, Yusuf & Irfan Pathan and many more influential voices on Twitter have amplified the #SaveZeus campaign.

Every day since the campaign started 11 days back, multiple stars like Neha Dhupia, Zareen Khan, Harbhajan Singh, Chris Gayle, AB De Villiers, Kriti Kulhari, Elli Avaram, Aparshakti Khurana, Shefali Jhariwala, Sanjeeda Sheikh, Ishita Dutta, Elnaaz Norouzi, Jai Bhanushali, Rannvijay Singla, Krushna Abhishek, Rahul Roy have joined in—making this one of the most amplified causes since people started discovering the power of crowd funding and celebrities started contributing for such causes by utilising their social media power. Needless to say, with time being of essence, it has surely led to a quick collection of generous donations.

Bollywood star Manjari Fadnnis has actually gone beyond using her voice, and actually donated for the cause with her name visibly displayed amongst the generous donors in the Ketto link https://www.ketto.org/fundraiser/my-son-is-fighting-for-his-life-and-we-need-your-support-to-save-him-701752 Manjari says, “There was a dilemma I faced. My sense of ethics said I should go about it anonymously but then I thought that would be counter productive. The idea is to inspire people by telling them I’m personally involved. So I decided to use my name.” Manjari doubled up on the cause by posting an additional video message about her contribution.

Influencers like Veda Krishnamurthy, Jatin Sapru, Papa CJ, Nikita Datta, Rahul Jaisingh, Karanveer Bohra, Akshay Mhatre and many more have also been harnessing their social media platforms to reach out to their millions of supporters via appeals to donate – a feat that no number of personal calls or WhatsApp messages could achieve as quickly. Zeus’ parents are immensely grateful for the support the campaign has received so far.

“On Thursday 6th October I made a desperate plea for help on the crowdfunding platform Ketto to raise the 5 Crores that are needed for Zeus’ treatment through a procedure called CAR T-cell therapy. Thanks to the cosmos, my appeal got noticed by a company started by my former students and many others – who took it upon themselves to help the cause and rallied their networks to help me,” says Arundhati Banerji, Zeus’ mother.

However, there is a long mile still to cover, and with just 9 days to go before Zeus’ parents sign up for the treatment and prepare to leave with him; Zeus is counting on every share, every forward and every rupee that will eventually make a difference to his entire existence. Luckily for him, the Bhairav Santh led Global Sporting Giant ITW and his school, the Delhi & Gurgaon based ‘The Shri Ram School’ took special interest in the cause have gone all out to support and push the cause. Both have been a key reason behind the not just the amplified voice but also a large chunk of big donors.

“Zeus is a remarkable child with a naughty smile and a warrior. He loves to read, share stories make music, and watch movies, especially about superheroes. And superheroes are what he needs now – to come together and help support the fundraising campaign. Zeus, unaware – is doing his bit in this fight to stay alive – we as a community must do ours. During the pandemic, we lost millions of lives to scarcity, and we as a community promised to be in it together and not have these series of unfortunate events repeat. Please come together once again and help save our son. Quoting one of Zeus’ favorite books ‘Harry Potter’ help him be the boy that shall live,” adds Arundhati.

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