The hunger games .. version n

Every time I read,  hear or see any article, talk or visual about hunger I blood runs cold. I feel the burning need to pick up my virtual pen and bang out a few words in the hope – mistaken perhaps – that someone somewhere will read them and decide to do something. This little film says it all. It shows us the despair of hunger that makes you look in bins and pick up discarded food and shows you at the same time how easily the like us of throw perfectly edible food.

Charity begins at home and thus a first step we need to take is to take an honest look at ourselves and see  how guilty we are. The message in the film goes to kids from privileged homes urging them to give rather than throw the home made food they are given. They are welcome to their fast meal, but should make sure that the home made one goes to someone who is hungry.

There are so many instances when we waste food. Look at the amount of good food thrown away during what I call religious feeding frenzies or bhandaras as they are called in India. And it is open season as we ready ourselves to greet the Goddess.

For the coming eight or none days, people will organise feeding extravaganzas at every street corner. Tables will be laid and food distributed to one and all. All you need to does look at the floor around these venues and you will see how much food is wasted. Why don’t people respect food, particularly the one offered as in the name of Gods. I gall every time I see this. Not to mention the plastic tumblers and plates that go with it.

Milk is poured to cool Lord Shiva. That milk finds its way into drains. Would Lord Shiva not be more pleased if the milk was given to a child as ins’t every child an image of God. I wonder why the innumerable so called god men that one sees on TV and elsewhere, and who have huge followings do not preach what they should: that food should not be wasted!

And why is it that we only remember to feed the poor at specific times. Is it just a way to ease ones conscience and wash away ones sins. Why not run a soup kitchen all the year round?

And wedding season is around the corner with more instances of food wastage. I have stopped going to weddings as I cannot bear to see the waste. What is sad is that young educated people are the ones who wish for such extravagance. If they simply agreed to commit a small percentage of the wedding bill to make a difference many lives could be changed.

I cannot bring myself to obliterate the one statistic that disturbs me most: 5000 children between the age of 0 to 5 die EVERY DAY of malnutrition related causes. This is no hidden fact. And yet we do not bat an eye lid when we throw good food.

It is time things changed. It is time we changed.