My Story: Whenever We Had Extra Food At Our Hostel Mess, We Would Go Out & Distribute It Among Homeless Kids

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 exams or study load one had, they compulsorily had to arrange for the funds to run the mess. This was a tedious job, as not many people were willing to donate when we went for fund collection. Many kept on giving excuses instead of money. In the end, sometimes we were the ones who had to pay from our pockets. Not just this, the responsibility also included guiding the mess workers regarding the menu, and monitoring the quantity and quality of food daily. Apart from this, those two students are entrusted with the responsibility to see if every hostelite is served food.
My partner was my friend in this activity in 2014. As the food was being cooked for approximately 200 students plus mess workers, 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 scared 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 have no obstacles on the first day and did our work smoothly. We gave noodles to a bunch of poor children on the footpath of Surya Sen Street. They were extremely 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 saw a rickshaw puller, who was returning after dropping his last passenger, he too seemed hungry. 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.
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 motivated.
Source: The Logical Indian
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