2 NARAYANAN KRISHNAN - A COMPANION TO THE FORGETTEN

On a weekend, I was logged in one of the well known social networking site. As usual I was going through the news feed, a video which is been shared in the feed diverted my attention to it. The video titled as “TheJoy of giving – Narayanan krishnan, I was in a casual mood chitchatting with my roommates before started watching it. The video is around two and half minutes, usually short and crisp ones get’s to my notice first. It started with a pleasant music that to with the Madurai’s Meenakshi temple in earlier frames. Then a guy came up saying “I saw a very old man, he was eating his own human waste for hunger”.

That’s it after listening to the first sentence; I came to a conclusion, “This video is not of my kind” and closed it. But those words somehow managed to inject many questions into my mind and made me so uncomfortable. I started to think, why would a human with common sense do such things of eating his own waste? Now I’m completely out of my casual mood and opened the video again and started watching it. Video continued to play; it looked like a small documentary about homeless. The guy continued “I thought, what is the purpose of my life, what am I going to do?” I was puzzled by his words and stopped chatting with my friends.

He described himself that “I’m a chef with a five-star hotel group, who feeds all my guests with delicious food”. He spoke some sentences, those were very brave and I’m speechless for the decisions he made, If I was there in his position I should have been selfish and Madurai would have been same as it was in 2002. His words are “In my hometown, there are people who are living, without food so I quit my job and started feeding all these people from 2002”. He daily cooks food for all the homeless, mentally ill destitute and old people in Madurai and feed them with his own hands. He has a vehicle which is used to carry the food to the people on the streets; he is not only satisfying their hunger but  also giving them hope and courage.

He feeds, he hugs, he cares and also he worships them. He continues saying that “People are suffering for food; they don’t have food to eat they will die out of human hunger. I cut their hair, I give them a shave, I give them bath, for them to feel, psychologically, that they are also human beings, and there are people to care for them, they have hand to hold, hope to live. Food is one part. Love is another part. So, the food will give them physical nutrition. The Love and affection you show will give them mental nutrition. Brahmins are not supposed to touch these people, clean these people hug these people, feed these people. Everybody has got 5.5 litres of blood. I’m just a human being. For me, everybody is same. What is the ultimate purpose of life? It’s to give. Start giving. See the joy of giving".

He is none other than Narayanan Krishnan; an award winning chef has served more than 1.7 million meals to India's homeless, destitute as of August 2011. He founded non-profit trust organization called “AkshayaTrust, Helping the Helpless”. In his talk @TED – To give without a reason organized at Mumbai he brought his father to the event and the words of his father on the stage were “Good evening to everybody, I’m very much proud of having my son Krishnan that’s all” and the tears rolled out of his eyes with pride. He was selected as one of the Top 10 in "CNN heroes 2010" list.

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