Food is an absolute necessity. The biggest charity is always connected with food. The ' Akshaya Patra ' incident in the Mahabharatam connected with the Pandavas, Draupadi and Lord Krishna is ever popular for its connected with food. The mid day meals scheme for school children brought in by Chief Minister K.Kamaraj continues to be remembered.
Food is an absolute necessity. The biggest charity is always connected with food. The ' Akshaya Patra ' incident in the Mahabharatam connected with the Pandavas, Draupadi and Lord Krishna is ever popular for its connected with food. The mid day meals scheme for school children brought in by Chief Minister K.Kamaraj continues to be remembered.
Bharat Ratna Awardee Chief Minister M.G.Ramachandran will forever be a part of history because of the mid day meals programme. ISKCON, Bengaluru under Madhav Pandit distributes free food to lakhs of school kids everyday and they have a fabulous menu. The Coimbatore Sambar is part of this menu. The food distribution in the Golden Temple at Amritsar, food distribution in Dharmasthala at Karnataka and the programme for feeding pilgrims and the poor at the temples of Tamilnadu brought in by the former Chief Minister J.Jayalalithaa are noteworthy mass food initiatives.
' Nizhal Maiyam ' is an NGO located in Coimbatore. It was founded by B.Murugan and he is known as Nizhal Maiyam Murugan in the city. Noble minded Murugan failed in his tenth exams and moved over to our region from Chennai. He began his life at Sirumugai in the year 1992. Failure had made him leave his parents Balaraman and Gangaiammal.
The elderly Karuppiah helped him and the boy Murugan used to stay in a 'thinnai'. On seeing the many who were struggling in life, the youngster decided that he would do something for the poor. Kalapatti Subbiah was another helping hand and Abdul Ghani Khan got him a cycle over time. Murugan worked as a ' boy ' in Hotel Kaviraj. In fact everyone around had accumulated Rs.500 to send him back to Chennai but the youngster wanted a job.
" I lived with just one pant and shirt for six months. Later on I bought paper and sold it for profit in the place made available to me by Kalapatti Subbiah. I had close shop because of the closure of South India Viscose. I moved over to Coimbatore because of Venkataraman and worked as a salesperson for his brother Sundararajan. Selling ' cycle ' brand agarbatties was my job and later on I got a license and became an auto driver. The job used to fetch me Rs.3000 per month and on 20/6/1998, I began to cook and serve food to the poor on the roadside. 25 people were fed those days. This was the beginning. Subsequently I joined Orient Hardware Tools Corporation group on Dr.Nanjappa Road for a salary of Rs.2500 per month in the year 2000. I must thank Shabbir Emani for giving me the Rs.100 for going to the concern Centroid Engineers in order to become a vehicle driver. I worked there up to 2011. Meanwhile the food service continued and thanks to Shabbir Bhai I got married to Usha in the year 2004. I had been a courier boy, paper delivery boy among other things earlier, " stated the ebullient Murugan.
Nizhal Maiyam has a number of donors and a huge family of volunteers whom Murugan calls as his family. They used to give food to 150 in the year 2000, this became 200 in 2001, 500 in 2002 and now it is 1300 ( once a week ). The food is made on a Sunday and served in a number of homes immediately by the volunteers. Usha, Murugan and Krishnakumar do the cooking.
The volunteers take the food and distribute it in a number of homes which offer shelter to the needy. 2011 was a landmark year for it was when Murugan appealed to the Corporation and got four shelters for the people who were living on the streets. Besides the Sunday food service, Nizhal Maiyam does a yearly programme called JOY year on year. This year 1700 were brought in 12 buses and entertainment was provided to them for the day. Clothes, uniform, bags, chappals and financial support is provided. Games and music are part of the deal. The visually challenged provide soulful music to the kids. City Travels, KPR College and others provide logistics support. Besides all this, the members of this NGO plant trees every week and have maintained a good score. Now, Nizhal Maiyam has established a nice steam kitchen in order to increase its scope of work.
" We are able to provide food for the poor week on week due to the support received from our patrons. Our patrons are Shabbir Emani, Kumar Venkatachalam, Venkatnarayanan, Mahaveer Jain, Rangarajan, Late Uma Devaraj, Shubha. J. Rao, Sujatha Rajesh, Balaji Vijay Venkataswamy, N.K.Velu, Krishnamurthy, Ranjani, Manikandan, Jagan Damodaraswamy of Annapoorna Hotels, Lakshmi Ceramics Muthuraman, Thulasi Pharmacy, Chandramouleeswaran, Chandramohan, G.Subramaniam, Vinod, Srinivasan, Ess Emm Corporation Sathish Kumar Nair, Feroze, Muhammad Ali, Chakravarthy and the marvelous L.Balaji Saravanan ( Deputy Commissioner of Police ). We use about 105 kilograms of veggies, 5 kilograms of ghee, 45 kilograms each of rice and dhal each among other ingredients.
The trustees are Krishnakumar, Murali and I am the Managing Trustee. We have more than 50 active volunteers and all of us have a T shirt with a white colour which represents purity and the blue body colour indicates that the heart should be as big as the ocean, " shared Murugan while on a trip with N.Krishnakumar of Akarsh Advertising ,distributing food on a Sunday.
Murugan is happy to add that the people of Coimbatore are really supportive. He ensures that food is distributed even in the absence of a contribution. At times he pledges the ornaments belonging to his wife in order to do food service without a break.
Now, Murugan and his team want to start a facility which will receive, store and distribute surplus food to the poor. He wants to have a nice freezer, food technologists and a testing facility for ensuring the quality of food. The Nizhal Maiyam members hope to make this a reality in the year 2019. The unusable food thus collected would be made into cooking gas or manure. Murugan wants to make Coimbatore into a beggar free city. Hard working Murugan has many more noble dreams and a huge team of volunteers are part of his extended family. All of them are hard working and display enormous humility.
The volunteers who support Nizhal Maiyam are - Krishnakumar, Sudarshan, Murali, Arulkumar, Sureshkumar, Sathishkumar, Sathish, Selvakumar, Manojkumar, Saravanan, Jayaseelan, Manikandan, Ananth, Ananthan, Ranjit, Ranjithkumar, Krishnan, Sadasivam, Gowtham, Surya, Sridhar, Kavi, Vidya, Hari, Parthiban, Aravind, Rahul, Kiran, Parthiban, Gnanamani, Sathya, Priyadarshini, Darshan, R.K.Madhav Balaji, Rajesh, Sunil, Dhandapani, Kalaichelvi, Velmurugan, Vinod, Ajay, Sabari, Sanjay, Vijaykumar, Jeevan kumar, Vijaykumar, Dinesh, Vignesh, Diya, Shekhar, Gnanaraj, Manoj Parivallal, Bhuvaneshwaran and Shivalingam. These volunteers fan out every Sunday morning in order to deliver hot food to the needy. The Nizhal Maiyam Sambar Sadham is delicious.
Contributors are welcome to contact Nizhal Maiyam Murugan on 98650 93251. Coimbatore is really blessed to have such wonderful citizens who believe in working towards the betterment of the society. Let us encourage them by supporting their cause.