I am a medical student at Calcutta Medical College and Hospital. I live in Swarnamoye Girls Hostel which is in the college campus. In our hostel, we had a system where two students studying in the second year, despite the study load, compulsorily had to do the mess duty. In which, not only we had to collect the funds from the hostelites eating from the hostel mess, but also guide the mess workers regarding the menu, and monitor the quantity and quality of food daily. Apart from this, we also had to serve the food.
My co-worker was my friend Tania, we had our duty in 2014. Food was cooked for approximately 200 students plus mess workers, so some amount was left almost daily, which got wasted. Seeing this I really wanted to do something regarding it.
One day, we had noodles, soup and Manchurian in the menu. When everyone had their dinner and no one was around, I told my friend, that we should go out and give this food to the needy. She agreed at once. We were afraid and excited at the same time. Scared because it was 11 pm, and if someone saw us carrying those big utensils they would ask several questions. Anyway, we were lucky to face no obstacles. We gave noodles to a bunch of poor children on the footpath of Surya Sen Street. They were highly excited to eat the noodles. They thanked us. Seeing all this made my friend and me very happy.
2-3 days later, when enough amount of food was left, we went again on our night tour for serving the starving homeless kids. The same bunch of children saw us and were hoping for noodles again. However, that day we had paneer and rice, but they were still happy to eat that. Then we saw a rickshaw puller, who was returning after dropping his last passenger. When we offered him Rice, there was a sign of relief on his tired face. He gave us blessings.
I remember there were some boys who were trying to click our picture. Thinking it to be eve teasing, we got scared. As I was not alone, but with my friend, I gained the courage and asked them to delete the pictures. However, to our surprise, they just wanted to make a video of us helping the poor people. They were from nearby college, they introduced themselves and asked for permission if they could make a video and put on YouTube to motivate others. At once, I said sorry we are not interested, as I didn’t want anyone else to know about this story then, as I thought one should not make an announcement of their good deeds. But now I want people to get motivated reading this. So in our one month of mess duty, we went several times to give food to homeless people. It always felt great when they thanked us. I request everyone not to give money to people, but instead give them food. I thought of sharing my story for others to get inspired.
Story By – Riya Agrawal
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