Four batchmates of a school in western Guwahati’s Maligaon area have “reunited” for a common cause — to serve free home-cooked meals for people in quarantine or home isolation due to COVID-19 infection.
Jayashree Choudhury, Ashok Sen, Basab Bhattacharjee and Amitabh Choudhury are from the 1991 batch of students of the Bengali-medium Netaji Vidyapith Railway Higher Secondary School.
Work and domestic responsibilities often did not allow them to meet at a time despite all of them staying in the Pandu-Maligaon area of the city.
The suffering of one of their classmates who lives in another part of the city brought them together in the second week of May.
“This friend of ours and her family members were going through a difficult phase as all of them were in isolation. We decided to do something about it and that was how our group, Friends Forever came up with the idea of cooking meals and delivering them free to people in quarantine,” Jayashree Choudhury said.
“It was a reunion of sorts on a daily basis to cook 50-60 meals hygienically, pack them and get them delivered to the doorsteps of people who need them,” she told The Hindu.
The driver of the initiative has been her businessman husband, Abhijit Chakraborty.
The friends knew how difficult life could be in isolation or during recovery from COVID-19. One of them, Amitabh Choudhury and members of his family, including his aged parents, had caught the novel coronavirus in 2020.
The friends posted about their initiative on social media. The received 10 requests on May 12, hours after social media users shared their offer in different groups.
They have so far served 800 meals, and they intend to carry on as long as people need their free service.
“What are friends, families, neighbours, acquaintances and strangers for if they cannot help each other in times of distress?” Mr. Bhattacharjee said.
