My Letter of Hope
“We’re all just armchair activists”, stated a complacent voice on a Google Meet call earlier this year. There was a note of comfortable acceptance to this ideology that was somehow disheartening. He then went on to speak of capitalism, being altruistic and expressed his love for food. Very soon the call turned to all things fun, but that one statement lingered with me. It made me wonder, “Are we all talk and no show? Do we even try?”
As with everything else in this pandemic, those thoughts were soon lost under a pile of new and old ones. It however, started impacting me at a subconscious level, as I was to find out soon enough.
Not long after, I got a call from Miti Desai, a dear friend, mentor and ex-colleague. She wanted to help COVID-19 patients by offering them home-cooked meals and asked me if I could help her with the operations. At that moment, my friend’s statement came back to me, and I jumped at the opportunity to not be on the sidelines anymore. When I look back now, little did I know what I had signed up for — 19 meals, 5 cooks, 5 volunteers, and one viral Instagram post — that was the summary of Day One.
We started with a small dream, and very soon I was promising meals to my 100th call for that day alone. Recipe of Hope (RoH) brought together two desperate sections of the society — one that was seeking out any help possible and the other that was restlessly trying to find ways to lend a helping hand.
RoH enabled people to connect with, and express, their humane side. I realized in this period that so many people wanted to help but weren’t sure how. It was an extremely heartwarming realization. The operational problems began to be seen as challenges to tackle, and we began knocking down the hurdles one by one as the days went flying by.
Before we knew it, we had a group of 30 volunteers, a tech team, social media friends and 90 people who offered to cook meals. As it quietly picked up pace and we began dispatching meals by the dozen, calls that were requests for help slowly turned into messages from recovered patients, so profuse in their gratitude that it would often leave me teary eyed, with a big smile on my face. Before I could fully begin to fathom all the gratitude and blessings coming our way, my phone would buzz with another set of messages, this time from the volunteers, who were happy for the opportunity to help make a difference.
Looking back, it feels like everything happened in the blink of an eye, from that first call with Miti to seeing the community stand up for each other and give selflessly. Each day, the help and generosity we received kept motivating us to keep going. New friendships were formed, emotions expressed, and we eventually reached a point where there was no screening, and we were all just a group of people who blindly operated on hope and trust. Each one who came forward to make RoH a success is a superstar, and I’m grateful that I got a chance to know them and work with them.
As the team worked relentlessly, through our fundraiser we were able to raise enough to sustain ourselves for the next two months. More volunteers joined in, everything started falling into place and we soon realized that we could do more… way more!
Thus, we started another vertical, this one aimed to reach people beyond the confines of the urban spaces. We dreamt a new dream, and promptly started working towards realizing it.
We were driven by hope and the trust people placed in us.
We began helping essential workers and the vulnerable communities, either with meals or with wholesome provisions kits. Our confidence to move ahead came from people whose generous donations kept replenishing our funds. Negotiating with vendors became a new skill I mastered, just like logistics management. I would speak with vendors, taking in their stories and grievances of losing their sources of income during the pandemic, and I would repeat them to the people who handled RoH’s finances in the hope that they would clear the bills at the earliest. The accountants had probably never come across someone as clueless as me.
It took us 56 days to finally step back and see the entire jigsaw puzzle that had fallen into place. 6,585 kg of ration was distributed on a single day. It felt like a movie setting — there were trucks and there were heroes, there was hope and there was action. To make it all the more dramatic, there was rain!
We started with the transgender communities, and went on to help many more in the course of the day. After minor hiccups and major heroics by our on-ground volunteers, the day looked like it was finally coming to an end. Our WhatsApp screens wouldn’t stop buzzing with pictures and videos of heartwarming stories. Each filled us with pride and made us see hope in these bleak times. And just when I thought I’d seen it all, there came a video of a little kid hunched over, trying to quickly carry into his orphanage, a 16 kg sack on his back, probably because he did not know if and when the next batch of provisions would come. Our volunteers ensured that we gave them more than enough before we moved on, but that image will stay with me forever.
Every night since, I’ve wondered if we as a community truly try to make a difference against all odds. Every time we see an issue that is bigger than us, do we even stop and wonder? Or are we so overwhelmed by the magnitude that attempting it is not even a thought? I often wonder if we feel the same way about all our lofty dreams, whether we even dream at all anymore?
Is it worth giving up because we can’t even get each other to try? I hope not, I really hope not. For as long as there is a kid in us who dares to dream, there will always be a kid out there who could use the light of your hope and learn to fly.
If your friendly arm-chair activist could do this with next to no skills in this particular area, and in between shifting careers in a pandemic, just think how much you can do.
Yours Sincerely,
Piyush Jain
