Inspiring Story of Compassion

Inspiring Story of Compassion

I don’t exactly remember where I started. All I can recall is that every time I celebrated my birthday or Christmas or Diwali, I was drawn towards the orphanage to celebrate it with the kids there.

I guess it all started at this one incident: My whole family and I were at the railway station, on our way to attend my sister’s wedding. At the station, there was a hungry person who was eating from the dustbin and he asked me for some money. I don’t know why I didn’t give him any money but I went straight to a tea and food stall and asked the vendor to give me Puri and curry. I took the puri and curry and gave it to the hungry man. I so clearly remember that feeling of seeing him eat it; I guess it was a sense of relief and happiness. That is the reason I have celebrated a lot of occasions at orphanage- this always makes the occasion more special for me. I don’t earn much so I have started a system where I put away Rs.3300 from my earnings and donate it to orphanages or needy people. Along with that, donating blood has become one ritual of my life now. 

Currently, I have started a program #FeedthehungrythisRamazan relief. 
When the government announced the lockdown to fight against COVID19, even I was very short on money. I had no source of income and I had a lot of EMIs to pay. For this reason, I couldn’t donate much, but I was always thinking about a way to help the needy. One day I heard about the 50 circus workers who were stuck here from around 1 month, their owners having abandoned them with no food or shelter. As they say, necessity is the mother of invention, hearing this story made me think of things with a new perspective. I thought, “What if I help them reach the government with their problems?” With this primary idea, I used Twitter and social media and slowly I successfully started getting responses from the higher officials. And their problems were sorted.

This made me realize that money doesn’t matter. If I really wanted to help someone, the right intention and determination was all I needed. So I talked to my father and we decided that I would make the food for Iftar for people who do Roza (fasting) but do have any food to eat. I initially thought I would start up with just 20 people but then a friend joined and we started making 50 packets. Slowly, we are getting a lot of donations from people so we have started adding fruits and other things into the packets. Now we have increased the number of packets to around 150. We hope to do more and help more people in future. 

– Prachi Harlalka
(Photographer) India.