HYDERABAD: Festivals are just excuses to enhance collective bonding and Ramzan ensures that no one sleeps hungry. It is a time when people of all religions care for people around them. “If you are an employee and want to order food for Iftaar, as a courtesy, you would order for everybody,” said Rubina Nafees Fatima, Founder and CEO of Safa organisation.
If you are a busy working individual who struggles to find time for a wholesome meal, let alone a lavish Iftaar, Luqma’s Iftaar platter is a good option. This platter includes traditional Iftaar elements commonly found in Muslim households such as dates, seasonal fruits, dahi wada, samosas, chana dal (also known as Iftaari), and juice.
Conveniently priced at Rs 155, the platter serves the food needs of corporate employees, doctors and nurses at hospitals, children in schools and orphanages and the elderly in old age homes. With Safa taking in the responsibility of delivering the food before 5 pm, the younger population can find it suitable to break the dawn-to-dusk fast with friends and workmates, keeping the spirit of Ramzan intact despite odd work hours.
Safa’s Luqma is run by women from underprivileged homes – most of them were left on their own without sufficient resources to make a meaningful living before they joined Safa. The organisation, which was founded 10 years ago, to provide support to people’s livelihoods and education, started Luqma, initially as a cloud kitchen, to enable women from the Vattapalli area to be able to make a living with their culinary skills.
“The USP of Luqma is that it specialises in the traditional cuisine of Hyderabad. The idea was to bring some of the oldest recipes and home-cooked food to the market. We trained some 30-odd women under renowned chefs and then opened the kitchen for orders,” said Rubina.
“We market our food in two ways, one is the pre-order menu and another is the ‘cheers to food charity’ menu, which is primarily for people who want to donate food to orphanages, hospitals, old age homes, etc. We have people from all over the world asking for food donations. This year, we have got 40 per cent more orders than usual. The key is that we don’t compromise on food quality so that the dignity in donating food remains intact,” she added.
Keeping alive the spirit of Ramzan, Luqma distributes the same curated platter all over the city. It provides the means and resources for people who would like to donate food but do not have the wherewithal to do it. As opposed to watery dal and badly cooked rotis, one could rely on the quality of food provided by Luqma.
Other options with Ramzan-centered delicacies available with Luqma are vegetarian and non-vegetarian thalis. The vegetarian one contains veg pulao, two rotis, mirch ka salan, raita and double ka meetha and is priced at Rs 199. The non-vegetarian thali costs `249 and has bagara rice, dalcha, Luqma chicken and salad. One could order a non-veg bowl too, with just rice and chicken curry for about Rs 229.