Celebrity Chef Khanna Is Helping India’s Hungry

Brut India

Cooped up in New York, chef Vikas Khanna, who has lost several friends and a close aunt to the pandemic, is pulling off an impressive relief effort in faraway India.

Transcript

00:00Today it distributed 2.5 million dry ration meals in more than 65 cities all over India

00:08So like almost like three and three weeks ago I received an email it was

00:27like a scam email which had a image a fabricated image of an elderly people in

00:34an ashram and somebody had a very emotional note it looked like a proper

00:39foundation's newsletter which was targeted to NRIs which said that you

00:44know this is the condition and your parents belong to India and you should

00:50support this and these people haven't eaten for days now in the lockdown and

00:54it was like a heartbreaking thing. I got trapped and I sent that guy some money

01:01and he says I'm gonna feed the people and later we saw that a picture was

01:07fabricated but it had already moved me because I realized it that there would

01:12be a need.

01:26I just tweeted about it saying that you know if you be requested to check into

01:31your neighborhood orphanages or old age homes or any community which requires

01:36dry food ration and if you can just email it to us so we will collect the

01:41data and we'll figure out how to help. This was the beginning of the movement

01:45but today we reached the benchmark of 2.47 million dry ration meals which

01:53means that this is about 75 grams of dry ration combined it could be we are doing

02:00three things we're doing rice we're doing atta which is whole wheat flour

02:03and we are doing lentils.

02:13When it started we secured we knew the places which needed food and we also had

02:19secured the rations but because of lockdowns and restrictions we did not

02:24understand how do we get the ration from point A to point B because I remember in

02:29Varanasi the city was open only between 7 a.m. to 11 a.m. and the guide just did

02:34not get up so we could not get the food to the ashram.

02:45They were the ones who got on the ground and made this all happen while I was in

02:50New York creating or understanding what was the requirement in point A and how

02:55do I secure that kind of food from point B.

03:01This all happened because of all of you. You're much stronger in solidarity and

03:07we can overcome any challenge when we're united and we come together as one.

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