Bengaluru Sikhs Ensure That Nobody Goes hungry in The City

Sikhs have been serving food to guest workers and the needy, distributing PPEs, sanitisers to cops in Bengaluru.

Sikh community has always been at the forefront of relentlessly helping people to tide over a crisis. Their altruism comes from the traditon of “seva”, which involves acting selflessly and helping others without any personal gain or reward.

 Sikh Community supplied 200 PPE kits as well as masks and sanitisers to the cops. 

And the city’s Sikh community has imbibed this spirit and have gone out of their way to help people. Despite the lockdown being lifted in Bengaluru, the needy are still struggling and searching for food kits. Even on Sunday, a few people walked into the Shri Guru Singh Sabha, Ulsoor, seeking kits. Ever since the city went into a complete lockdown from mid-March, volunteers from the Sabha have been reaching out to people in various areas.

Sardar Harjinder Singh, the president of the Sabha, said that when the lockdown was first imposed, they reached out to people living in the slums located of Yeshwanthpur, Mysore Road and distributed rice and dal items. However, they soon realised that there was a demand for cooked food. With the gurudwara’s kitchen equipped to cook around 20,000 meals in a day, they soon started serving cooked food to 1,500 to 2,000 people three times a day. Rishipal Singh, assistant manager of the Sabha, said that though the food served by the gurudwara consists of traditional Punjabi cuisine, it was tweaked to serve the local palate. “Hence, we started serving lemon rice, tomato rice and other times to serve the local people. We continued serving the cooked food till May following which we reverted to supplying the food kits as there was a great demand for it,” he said.Most of these guest workers didn’t prefer chapatis and hence we started serving them freshly cooked rice, “ he said.

Rishipal said that they also were able to serve guest workers heading out of the city as they were in touch with the police. “We were serving mainly food to guest workers at KR Puram railway station. I still recall a tweet from a Kashmiri student who had thanked us after reaching her hometown during the lockdown,” he added.

Rishipal said that maintain physical distancing at the railway station was a big challenge for the volunteers. “It was really tough and the police had to pitch in but then we started serving food to the guest workers on the buses that were used to transport them to the station. 

They supplied 200 PPE kits as well as masks and sanitisers to the cops. “We soon started getting calls from outside Bengaluru especially from places like Dharwad. Though we could not physically reach out to them, we decided to build contacts so that the locals who were in need of essentials could buy it from shops and we could pay these shops,” he added.

https://bangaloremirror.indiatimes.com/bangalore/others/sikhs-ensure-that-nobody-goes-hungry-in-the-city/articleshow/77187336.cms