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?