BENGALURU: A wedding had been solemnised in a marriage hall. The bride and groom had happily left and so had the guests. The bills were cleared. Around late afternoon, the choultry manager, who was overseeing the clean-up, discovered excess food in the kitchen. As was the practice, he dialled for the corporation van.
The van arrived, workers looked at the “waste” and demanded 1,000 rupees to clear it. A heated argument ensued. R B Shivakumar, who was passing by, witnessed this. What he did next changed the course of his life. He convinced the manager that he would take away the food for free. The manager happily agreed. Shivakumar then called his friends, filled the excess food in three cars and asked them to follow his car. He turned on the ignition with no idea where to go. There were close to 1,000 plates of food in three cars. He only had four hours to return the vessels to the manager, which he had managed to take after much persuasion.
He finally decided to head towards Laggere, which houses one of the biggest slums in Bengaluru. He stopped the cars, announced to a passerby that they have free food. Within 20 minutes he saw people coming out with big vessels and plates. In the next 10 minutes, the vessels had emptied, much to Shivakumar’s huge relief.
This incident, which happened 16 years ago, became the turning point in Shivakumar’s life. Since then, he has been waking up every day to collect excess food from events and distributes it in railway stations, bus stands, slums or wherever there are hungry mouths to feed. Through word-of-moth popularity, he now gets calls from across the city to collect food.
An SSLC dropout, Shivakumar owns a ‘granthike angadi’, which is a shop that sells herbs and holy articles. But he hardly has time for the business. “I get over 50 calls every day to collect excess food. These days I ask the people to come and keep it near my house. I alone cannot go everywhere. I don’t want to hire anybody because we are dealing with food and it might be risky. The minute food reaches, I make sure it does not go waste. I drive across the city, sometimes over 50 km to distribute it,” says Shivakumar, his weary eyes betraying a lack of sleep.
The day before the interview too he was awake till 2 am, distributing food near City Railway station. “If you want to see a place that is a microcosm of India, you should visit railway stations. You can see different kinds of people there. I mostly go to railway stations carrying food from reception parties after 12am because all the eateries there will be closed. People coming out happily eat the food and it gives me a lot of satisfaction,” Shivakumar says.
Shivakumar mostly takes food to slums, bus stations and railway stations. He spends thousands of rupees from his own pocket every day for fuel and paper plates and water. He also makes sure he tastes the food before taking it.
Shivakumar recalls an incident. “I picked up food from a wedding in Palace Grounds. The food I collected could easily feed over 5,000 people. I travelled across Bangalore till late night, but could not finish the food. Then I had to throw over 100 plates of food because it had become stale,” he says.
He now wants to open a cold storage where food can be stored for a little longer. “The only thing I get from this is immense satisfaction and that is more than enough for me,” he says.
‘Father is my inspiration’
Shivakumar says his father R V Bhadraiah started his business on a footpath. “Even then he used to fill up water in mud pots for passersby and keep them at a bus stand. When our business slowly started to grow, he kept water pots in around 15 to 20 locations. Later, when our business improved, he built bus shelters. He has been a great source of inspiration,” he says.
When CM’s wife called
Shivakumar recalled how Chief Minister Siddaramaiah’s wife Parvathi dialled him in the midst of a personal tragedy. It was the 13th day after her son Rakesh’s demise and she wanted him to take the extra food that had been prepared as part of the rituals and distribute it among the poor. “I also got a call to collect food from Parivarthana rally. I could not go but I advised them to distribute the food in villages that they would cover during the rally. Later I found out that food that could have fed thousands of poor people had gone waste. I feel very bad when such things happen,” he says Shivakumar can be reached at: 9900568514.