Birth­days are a joy­ful time, an an­nual op­por­tu­nity to cel­e­brate life. Full of joy, ex­cited for the year ahead, do­ing some­thing you love with the ones who make you smile. All but 21 years, ‘lac­ta­tion care coun­sel­lor’ and a com­mit­ted woman rights cam­paigner Thaarika and her fam­ily, in down­town Wala­japet in Tamil Nadu, cel­e­brated the sec­ond birth­day of her child Af­fan by dis­trib­ut­ing cooked Biryani to those who were with­out work and with­out food due to Covid19 re­stric­tions. WSN colum­nist Gurmeet Singh pro­vides a glimpse into her in­spir­ing life and mis­sion. 

TODD­LERS WANT PAR­TIES. Sib­lings want joy and fun. The fam­ily wants a get-to­gether. Thaarika wanted to serve and share. Last week, her gala time, with her hus­band Salman and the tod­dler in tow was go­ing from house to house in the neigh­bour­hood and dis­trib­ut­ing Biryani -a South-In­dian spe­cial­ity of rice and chicken or rice and veg­eta­bles, sta­ple to the re­gion.

Af­fan’s birth­day was cel­e­brated in this way dur­ing the lock­down in the small town of Wala­japet in the Ra­nipet dis­trict of Tamil Nadu, nearly a 100 kilo­me­tres from the cap­i­tal Chen­nai and 30 kilo­me­tres from the ed­u­ca­tional city of Vel­lore.

‘Af­fan’ means mod­est and so is the fam­ily. The ‘In­fant and Young Child Feed­ing Spe­cial­ist’ -Thaarika told this writer, “We do not cel­e­brate birth­days the way the world does. No cakes. No gifts. No new dresses. My hus­band and I reach out to peo­ple in need and take joy in serv­ing food and coun­selling women wher­ever needed.”

The pan­demic sit­u­a­tion pro­vided them with an op­por­tu­nity to do more than what they reg­u­larly do. The hus­band and wife duo -the ‘birth pro­fes­sion­al’ and the bud­ding ac­tivist lawyer served a healthy and nu­tri­tious diet to 500 peo­ple in need.

This was not just a one-off act. In the ini­tial pe­riod of the lock­down, Thaarika and her fam­ily dis­trib­uted 600 kilo­grams of veg­eta­bles to 150 fam­i­lies, in­clud­ing 5 to 10-year-old kids, among whom were those who were hold­ing the Ra­madan fast and were fac­ing dif­fi­culty in ob­tain­ing ad­e­quate food to break the daily fast.

“He is not a be­liever whose stom­ach is filled while the neigh­bour to his side goes hun­gry.” (Ibn Ab­bas) .

The gov­ern­ment of Tamil Nadu failed to pro­vide Se­vaiyann -rice por­ridge to break the fast for the eco­nom­i­cally suf­fer­ing fam­i­lies but had the bad sense of open­ing gov­ern­ment-run liquor shops. What an irony!

Thaarika had to miss her On­line Hu­man Rights class but was do­ing hu­man­i­tar­ian work in­stead. This gave me the op­por­tu­nity as a co-learner to get to know about this young ac­tivist. Is­n’t this as­ton­ish­ing, su­perb, won­der­ful, mag­nif­i­cent? The act is too big and words fail me in de­scrib­ing her no­ble work.

“Blessed is the wealth of the Mus­lim, from which he gives to the poor, the or­phan and the way­farer.’ (Mus­lim).

A great deal of thought went into the cel­e­bra­tions. They se­lected the area of peo­ple who work as labour­ers in leather tan­ner­ies, or as beedi-in­dige­nous cig­a­rettes rollers. These daily wa­gers had no in­come dur­ing the lock­down and ob­tain­ing veg­eta­bles and other in­gre­di­ents too was a chal­lenge.

Hu­mil­ity per­son­i­fied, Thaarika quoted from re­li­gious texts to this au­thor, say­ing, “The Prophet, peace and bless­ings be upon him, said, “He is not a be­liever whose stom­ach is filled while the neigh­bour to his side goes hun­gry.” (Ibn Ab­bas) and “Blessed is the wealth of the Mus­lim, from which he gives to the poor, the or­phan and the way­farer.’ (Mus­lim).

This is not where it ends. Thaarika has plans to open an in­sti­tu­tion for ‘Breast milk do­na­tion’ where breast milk will be do­nated by moth­ers to save in­fants of moth­ers who do not lac­tate in gov­ern­ment and other hos­pi­tals, serve nu­tri­tious meal packs to those in gov­ern­ment hos­pi­tals, preg­nant women and new moth­ers with tod­dlers up to 5 years. Talk­ing about her dreams, she said, “We will be­gin with our home­town, then serve the ar­eas around Vel­lore and grad­u­ally branch out to the whole state. Who knows? Maybe the whole coun­try!”

Thaarika has plans to open an in­sti­tu­tion for ‘Breast milk do­na­tion’ where breast milk will be do­nated by moth­ers to save in­fants of moth­ers who do not lac­tate. 

The Almighty is great and there is no end to his bless­ings. He has blessed peo­ple and has cho­sen a few to carry on his work of love and hu­man­ity and this is what both the par­ents of Af­fan thrive upon. They want to teach this to him and cel­e­brat­ing his birth­day in this way is a les­son which is added to the life of the blessed child and he will be proud of this mo­ment when he learns while he grows up.

I have had im­mense plea­sure in shar­ing this story as one of the great tales of a young lady who is des­tined to make a big con­tri­bu­tion to hu­man­ity. For a 21-year-old mother of a 2-year-old child, is­n’t that rev­o­lu­tion­ary?