'Kitchen religion' hits 1,00,000 mark ISKCON's daily meal scheme for children touches magic figure; plan on for one more kitchen

'Kitchen religion' hits 1,00,000 mark

ISKCON's daily meal scheme for children touches magic figure; plan on for one more kitchen




The International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON)'s daily feeding programme for children in the city's municipal and government-aided schools has reached a figure of 1,00,000 meals.
The organisation now plans to set up its third kitchen in the eastern suburbs to reach more children in areas like Trombay.
The feeding programme, started by Swami Radhanath, the founder of ISKCON's Chowpatty temple, began with 900 meals for a Parel school on August 16, 2004. "We did not have a special kitchen and cooked the food at the temple's kitchen. Many devotees were sceptical since it involved huge responsibility. We started with smaller number of meals and gradually increased the quantity," said Radha Krishna Das, all-India director of ISKCON Food Relief Foundation.
At the automated kitchen at Tardeo which was set up in 2005, 12 cooks prepare 64,000 meals in a compact 1200-square space. The food is cooked with steam and a fire stove is used only for making the tadka or tempering for the khichdi.
Work at Tardeo and at the other kitchen at Mira Road begins just after midnight when attendants put together ingredients for the khichdi, recipes for which are approved by dieticians at ISKCON's Mira Road hospital. While the main ingredient for the meal is rice, other constituents like the dals and spices are varied over the week so that the children get a variety in flavours. ISKCON's school meals are made to suit local eating habits: Rice, sambhar and curd in schools in Andhra Pradesh, puris and paranthas in Delhi and in Haryana, rotis.
The food is transported to the schools in steel containers that contain 10 kg of khichdi which is enough to feed an average class of 40 students.
Food is an important part of religious celebrations at ISKCON's and some members even jokingly call their movement a 'kitchen religion'. Most ISKCON temples have a vegetarian restaurant attached and one of the most enduring photographs of Swami Prabhupada, the movement's founder is of him in the kitchen, looking at the gastronomic requirements of his devotees after catering to their spiritual needs.
Since the mid-day scheme is jointly administered by the union and state governments, ISKCON gets the main ingredient rice free along with a 'cooking charge' of Rs2.60 per meal from the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation. Transportation costs and staff wages take the cost of making a meal to Rs 4.50 and the gap is bridged by donations from devotees.
Recently the state education minister Rajendra Darda asked ISKCON to provide mid-day meals to 20,000 children in municipal schools in his hometown Aurangabad.