Dadi ki Rasoi: Feeding the hungry at Rs 5 and it is not a charity

Dadi ki Rasoi is a unique experiment started by a family with no state support, to provide nutritious hot meals to the poor.

Anoop Khanna started out in life as a businessman, a chemist. He still runs his shop as the bread and butter option. But he has an obsession that refuses to leave him.

At a family lunch one day, he noticed his 90-something mother just picking at her food. She’d been ill and was unable to eat. Something stirred within Khanna when she lamented the amount of food that was going waste because she had no appetite. On August 21, 2015, the Khanna family decided to start a soup kitchen, Indian style, offering affordable meals to people on the streets who are hungry but cannot spend much money.

With the full backing of his family and the support of many friends, he has been hosting a 5-rupee meal every day from 10 am-1.30 pm at Sector 7 and 12 noon to 2 pm at Sector 29 in Noida since 2015. Today, around 500 people get a hot meal every day.

It was Khanna’s daughter Sakshi who decided to name the soup kitchen Dadi Ki Rasoi (Grandmother’s kitchen). Khanna made the initial investment of Rs 30,000. Why Rs 5? Why not free? Khanna believes no one values anything that’s free. Besides, everyone needs food but self-respect is important too. So asking for nothing except that people queue up to buy food (he was determined that there should be no ugly fights over food: There is nothing worse. At Dadi ki Rasoi, you break the queue at your own peril) Khanna is on hand every day, dishing out tasty food.

Everything is cooked in desi ghee. And Khanna packs a lunch box for himself where he samples the food before serving it to others. The highest standards of hygiene are maintained in the kitchen. It is as if you are eating home-made food. He procures all the groceries himself from wholesale markets at half the market price. A sabziwala sells vegetables to him at low prices in return for food for himself and his family. Everyone who eats at the outlet is treated the same way: Whether they are rickshaw-pullers, or garbage pickers or toilet cleaners or domestic help. The only exception is roti, which is hard to make and hard to scale up. Extra roti is given to someone who is demonstrably poor because they need it more. When you’ve finished your meal, there are capacious dustbins to clear the rubbish. Once the soup kitchen winds up for the day, you can’t tell it was there, the surroundings are so clean.

“I don’t know how long I will be able to run this. But this much I can tell you: There is nothing more satisfying than watching someone obviously hungry, eat to their fill. When I felt my experiment had taken off, I decided I would run it as long as I could,” Khanna told local newspapers.

One thing has led to another. For Rs 10, you can buy a recycled warm jacket or pull-over from the same spot. Khanna collects old serviceable clothes from donors, has them dry cleaned and repaired if necessary, wraps them in clean plastic sheets and offers them for sale to those who have their lunch at his outlet. Because he is a qualified chemist, he has also started, leveraging the Prime Minister Jan Aushadhi Yojana, to provide even the most costly medicines at a fraction of the cost — sometimes no more than Rs 1 or 2.

Recognising his efforts, friends, family and even strangers contribute in different ways. On birthdays or wedding anniversaries, people donate sweet dishes, sponsor food or buy groceries to feed people on one day. In the bitter cold that has gripped the capital, warming glucose biscuits, khoya sweets and fruits were served over the new year, because of the generosity of generous benefactors. There are people who offer services, not just cash: And Khanna can do with additional hands any time.

He says he is originally a resident of Moradabad in UP and came to Noida in the 1980s. For several years, he ran a chemist shop but was deeply inspired by his father who participated in the freedom struggle and believed in Gandhi’s dictum that society will become what people want it to become. He doesn’t believe in charity but in generosity and philanthropy; in need, not greed.