First let me tell you honestly that this is my personal experience and I was never going to write about this here on blog or on anyother platform. I never felt like penning it down in words....I don't have reason but I didn't want to write this.
But when I saw this feed on BlogAdda , I thought of sharing this incident....not because this incident is so much important for me to share (in fact it's reverse I never wanted it to share here) .....But than I am also feeling that.... if spending 15 minutes makes difference for one child than ...it would be best 15 minutes spent by me.
- I am going to #BlogToFeedAChild with Akshaya Patra and BlogAdda.
It was not so good day for me and had little bit tiff with friends and I was sitting at open air food joint near by my home. I like the Food of that place and I have made it customize it for me, But that day the boy who generally prepare it for me was not there and someone else has prepared and messed up with taste. So I just gave up eating after taking two bites and got busy in chatting with friends over phone. After few minutes a little boy came up....he has posters and charts in his hand.....he must be selling it on the signal during daytime.... I thought.
The boy asked me if he can take that food plate if I don't want to eat. Then as it was already cold and was there for sometime ... I asked the cafe guy to give him other plate instead of mine ( Don't know why I have done that ...may be because I wasn't happy with day ... and just wanted to cheer up my mood ). The boy has started eating food and I got busy with chatting again.
The thing surprised me was that after completing that fresh plate of food....boy came up and asked me if I can still take that old plate of food with me. I just asked ....if he is still hungry I can order one more plate but the reply I got was shocking.
Boy said... No I am not taking it for me. I want it for my friend who is selling such stuff across other signal. May be food is not so good for you but then it is so much better than what we have daily. He will be happy having it even though it is cold. He collected it and left the place....and I left sitting there dumb struck.
It was the same place where that "Pizza incident" (click there to read) I have came across that gang of "Shoe Polish" guys... who refused to take money. I kept on recalling each and every incidents where I have left food or not ate it with vague reasons. I shared the incident with my friend and one time room mate, he is journalist and working with local news channel.
He told me that there are more than 100 NGOs are listed to work on this for our city and all are getting huge grants from organizations and wealthy families but issue is not resolved and it's never going to resolve. We have done detailed research as well and found that many of those were fake and just used for converting black money or for saving taxes. Hardly one or two of them were doing some amount of work but no one were there to monitor their work and nothing was transparent in their system.
So we thought instead of giving in some trust or temple and monitor let's just keep it simple. We will make arrangement for food for these two kids. Next day when that boy came ... we took him to near by dining hall and made a deal with Kaka who is owner of that place that provide food to both boy everyday and we will pay for them, Kaka too is generous enough to agreed with that and reduce the charge little bit as well.
See from our point of view it was very simple....we don't have lot's of bucks to splash across. What we are thinking is very much simple.... first we don't have that extra bucks inherited from our elders... second we are not going to cut something from our budget of entertainment. We will just try to save something from our extra expense which we are doing just for our self..... not out of necessity but sheered out of laziness. We have tried it for one month and saving was little less than what we had to pay for food but then adding that little extra is worth spending something from my luxury budget.
What I personally feel is that ... if you are donating something ...don't just do it for sake of doing it. Make sure that you are doing it the right way.
- P.S. Our BlogAdda team is doing great job with this initiative and I am sure that Akshay Patra will keep on getting good response to continue this work.
