While most celebrities are staying home and urging fans to do the same during the lockdown, popular Bengali actor Ushasie Chakraborty is out on the streets most afternoons, feeding stranded migrant workers.
“While staying home is the right thing to do, one can’t entirely forget the plight of those going hungry. So we decided to set up a community kitchen with police permission,” Ms. Chakraborty, hugely popular as the character of ‘June’ in Bengali teleserial “Sreemoyee”, told The Hindu.
“We are a team of eight people, including the lady who cooks. Apart from me, there are six local boys, you must name them — Swaroop, Sourav, Chiranjeet, Kinjal, Arnab and Rangan — who oversee the cooking and distribute the food,” she said.
“When the lockdown began, we were cooking for about 50 people. Then we started cooking for 150 people. Now we provide rations to those who have stoves to cook and prepare food for about 120 people who don’t have the means to cook,” she said.
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The food is cooked in a place called Bijaygarh in Jadavpur, and the daily menu includes rice and dal and a vegetable. Occasionally egg curry is thrown in, and on a couple of occasions there was chicken.
Ms. Chakraborty said: “We pool in money to run the kitchen. We receive donations from friends. A few of my friends in the U.S. helped out. The film fraternity is helping too. People like [director] Kamaleshwar Mukherjee and [actor-writer] Padmanabha Dasgupta have been helping. [Mr. Mukherjee] arranged for 50 kg each of potato and onion. [The well-known music director] Debojyoti Mishra has also contributed.
“Earlier we would all gather every day to distribute the food, but now, as more [COVID-19] cases get reported, we realise we too are at risk and therefore take turns. We, of course, wear masks and gloves. We put the food in disposable plates and people pick them up.”
One can’t be sure whether the beneficiaries recognise her, considering they may not have access to TV and also because she wears a mask, but at least they are not going hungry because of her efforts.
Ever since the lockdown was imposed in West Bengal on March 23, Kolkata has seen the emergence of several groups that have taken it upon themselves to serve the needy, especially feeding daily-wagers and stranded workers and reaching essential supplies to the elderly living alone.
Among the most active groups include Let’s Help, run by Debayan Datta; and a network of former and current students of Jadavpur University coordinated by Iman Kalyan Lahiri, a professor of International Relations.
