Jaidevbhai said "I remember from young age some of the people who regularly visited our house were Purshotambhai Lakha, Bhagwajibhai Tulsidas, Bhanjibhai Dosa, Jerambhai Kara etc from Uganda, the
other three Lakha brothers, specially Hirjibhai and Shamjibhai(Bapu), Hirabhai Virji and brothers Bhagwanjibhai Devji etc from Mombasa. These are just a few names but there were so many who phoned or met regularly. Maganbhai Chakubhai, Damjibhai Devji and Lalji Jetha family all were very close to him. Shri Harshadbhai Rana once called him a legend in one of his fb comments.

Vadilal left India when he was about 18 and initially was in Uganda for a while and came to Nairobi around 1940 or before and had a shop in Jiwanji Gardens, which  he closed and went to India around 45 and got married and came back and joined Damjibhai Devji for a while and again opened his own business. He passed away at Nairobi in 1972.

----------------------------------------------

24 Aug 2014

Ashish Soni serves kitchari to hungry Londoners from the Hare Krishna Food For Life van


Ashish serving to the hungry

Ashish Jaidev Vadilal Soni, London is a qualified accountant. He is a civil servant working in Croydon (London) at the Home Office, and people there call him Ash but at the Hare Krishna temple he is Acyuta.

He got involved with the Hare Krishna movement in his last year of uni about 10 years ago. A few monks came down, and gave a class on karma and why bad things happen to good people, and he found

answers he had been looking for.

Ashish was initiated in 2007, and given a baptism name: Acyuta Charan Das.

Around the same time, Ashish���¯���¿���½s wife Dipti introduced him to the Food For Life project, and he started volunteering. It was started by the founder of the Hare Krishna movement, AC Bhaktivedanta Swami

Prabhupada, in the 70s, after he saw poor children fighting with dogs over scraps of food in the street during his time in India. His vision was that anyone within a 10-mile radius of a Hare Krishna temple

should not go hungry, so he sent his devotees out to feed the needy.

Hare Krishna movement sanctify the food, offering it to God, and that spiritualised food is called prashad, which means the mercy of the Lord. Hare Krishna devottes believe that prasad helps you materially

- by satisfying your hunger with nutritious food - but also brings you spiritual benefit. It's a worldwide project, with volunteers distributing food in cities everywhere.

The service they provide runs from Monday to Thursday, out of the temple in central London on Soho Street.

In need of more volunteers

They need more volunteers, especially someone with a driving licence, so they can expand to Fridays. The main dish they serve is kitchari, which the kitchen staff at Govinda's, the restaurant next to the temple,

prepare.

Kitchari is made with rice, lentils, veg and lots of spices. The beauty of kitchari - which means "mixture" - is that any leftover veg can be added. So the chefs use whatever they have to hand and it's different

every day. They also make a wholemeal cake with fruit.

Ashish arrive with the other volunteers at about 6:15pm, after work. They make the evening's drink - in the winter, it's usually hot masala tea, and in the summer, a fruit juice. Once they've made the food prasad,

they load the temple van up with the food and drink, recyclable plates and cutlery and a table, and set out for Lincoln's Inn Fields, just outside Holborn station. They give out 200-250 plates every day.

The food is made entirely with produce donated to the temple, and sometimes we receive other things too - the other day CoYo donated 12 crates of their vegan coconut yoghurt, which we distributed alongside

the prashad. One of the people who came said that her personal trainer had been telling her to eat CoYo, and she'd been buying pots of it for ���¯���¿���½3 a pop ���¯���¿���½ The homeless guys were loving it, filling up their bags.

Over the years Ashish has got to know a few of the people who come - it's a real mix: homeless people, immigrants who might not be on the streets but who live well below the poverty line. And then others come

for the social interaction. The other day they had to get in the van at the end of the night and tell this one poor chap that we needed to leave - he just wanted to keep talking.

On a personal level, it's a very rewarding experience. Sometimes they've had people come who haven't eaten for a few days, and have three or four platefuls. I used to taste the food, but once a guy came after

I'd eaten the last plate and wanted food, and I felt so bad that now I don't eat or drink anything in case someone comes at the last minute.

Courtesy: Guardian