Find your neighbours at these hunger spots in Chennai – The Hindu

“Neighbour” is standardly employed in a narrow sense, depicting what breathes immediately next-door. In practice, neighbourliness does not always manifest that way. It may skip a string of houses and find the one at the tail-end of the street; and in rare cases, encompass the whole street. It may ignore the stack of floors in the block and gravitate towards an “alien” block; and in rare cases, touch the whole community.

Neighbourliness of the rare and exemplary variety usually plays out during festivals, showing up in how home-made treats are shared even with acquaintances.

Arun Kumar, director of the Chennai chapter of No Food Waste (NFW) challenges residents, this festival season, to further extend this neighbourliness to reach out to the “invisible neighbours” found in “hunger spots”, probably near their localities.

The festive spread usually outstrips the mouths they are made for and unless given away on time, the surplus food can become wasted food. It helps to know the hunger spots in one’s locality.

“On October 27, a resident of Choolai called to inform us that from a function at home, there was excess food that could feed a minimum of ten people. Instead of picking it up, we directed him to a hunger spot near his home. He messaged us that he gave away the food and it was happily accepted,” says Arun Kumar.

“Givers are as diffident about approaching those in need to give away food as the needy are in asking for it. However, when residents reach out to those in hunger, more people are served and less food is wasted. It supplements the work being done by NGOs in this area. If residents go to the trouble of reaching the small quantities of excess food they may be left with, to the hungry, it would enable the NGOs to focus on bigger interventions.”

Every neighbourhood may have hunger spots in its vicinity, and it takes just wee bit of curiosity and a soupcon of care to unearth them. However, from a pan-Chennai perspective, certain easily accessible and well-hooved spaces are known to be gnawed by with hunger pangs, day in and day out.

“At the Koyambedu market, many daily-wagers work and sleep at the same place, getting by on whatever food they get. It is not unusual for them to go without food some days. At the Marina beach, the homeless would spend the night, and many of them would have gone to sleep on an empty stomach. There are pockets in the Madhavaram area that serve as ‘home’ for daily wagers engaged in logistics industry. After work, they may head to some of these places in the locality, park themselves temporarily.”

Arun lists a few bridges among the hunger spots.

“The Kodambakkam bridge is a shelter for many people, particularly those who have come to the city looking for opportunities in the film industry. Under the bridge at Dr Radhakrishnan Salai near the New Woodlands hotel; under the Padi flyover, Kathipara flyover and the bridge near T Nagar Pothys.”

Based on data of where food requirements have come up, NFW Chennai has drawn up hunger-spot charts for Chennai, Chengalpattu and Thiruvallur districts, which fall within its sphere of operations.

Spaces around railway stations and busy bus stands and markets figure prominently in these lists.

From a consolidated list, hunger spots are regularly found near Taramani MRTS station, Keelkatalai bus stand, Perungudi MRTS station, Velachery flyover, Ekaduthangal Metro station, Alandur Metro station, Central Railway station, Koyambedu bus stand, Egmore railway station, Besant Nagar bus stand, Nehru park Metro station, T Nagar bus stand, Tambaram bus stand, Avadi bus stand, Avadi market, Pattabiram market, Thinanur bus stand, Thinanur railway station and Poonamallee bus stand.

Listing of certain addresses may be counter-intuituve, as these are spaces one may not readily associate with hunger pands. Panditha Medu is marked on the chart NFW Chennai has prepared for Chengalpattu district. It is a somnolent village on the southern extremities of OMR and one would assume that it is as self-sufficient as villages can be.

“During the pandemic many people have become jobless requiring us to head into such places. Apart from pavement dwellers, there are many who lack a steady income. Even in the pre-pandemic times, we have visited such places on OMR as there was a need and we would have sufficient quantities of food to meet it. In the pre-Covid period, there was a time when we would regularly collect anywhere between 200 and 300 excess food portions from Taramani-based Freshworks almost every day.

Similarly, from Apollo Cancer Hospital in Taramani, food in excess of what had been served to their employees would be collected. These food parcels would have to be distributed to needy people in that belt, and we keep looking for any hunger spots that we would have missed. That is how we come upon such areas where some people may not be gainfully employed and struggle on account of that. Before the pandemic, we would collect even Swiggy’s online cancel orders at their hubs in Anna Nagar, T Nagar, OMR, Chromepet and Vandalur. The delivery boys would hand over the cancellation orders at these hubs, from where our volunteers would collect lunch and dinner. The collected food would be given to people in need in nearby areas.”

Arun underlines that every month, we undertake a hunger-spot search together with volunteers. “We try to learn about their earnings, and see if they are making ends meet.”

He observes that a group of gypsies have pitched tent in Thalambur and Navallur, and they are frequently in need — but for the exercise to scour the landscape for hunger spots, little would have been known about these groups, let alone their plight.

Operating in Chennai, Chengalpattu, Thiruvallur and Kancheepuram districts, Chennai NFW has to pass on periodic reports about food collection and distribution in these sections, to the officials concerned in the Food Safety Department and this factor, Arun points out, has made the organisation a pertinacious keepers of records.

“There is a pattern to the reports presented to the food safety Department, with details of collection and distribution. Where we collect the food; what food is collected; its period of validity; where it is being distributed; and the donor’s signature. We keep all of this data. From such data on food distributions, pictures of hunger spots emerge organically.

If you want to reach any excess food preparations this festival season directly to the people in “hunger spots” near your locality, you may call NFW Chennai’s helpline at 9962790877/ 7550290877 or 8056142349.