On one cold Halloween evening, the NCNA (Northern California Nagarathar Association) chettiars volunteered to prepare and serve food at the InnVision homeless shelter in downtown San Jose. Over 25 nagarathar families joined the event. The first step in this endeavor was to buy groceries and prepare the scrumptious food. Around 15 chettiar families volunteered to buy and prepare the exquisite menu consisting of spaghetti, meatballs, minestrone soup, chicken wings, dinner rolls, juice, and ice cream. The food was loaded up in their cars to the homeless shelter. There they started to heat the tasty array of food and cook a couple of dishes. At around 6:00 PM, the homeless people started coming in. The kids helped serve food to the unfortunately long line of homeless people. It was staggering to see how many people were stuck without the simple necessities of food and shelter. In fact, over 180 people came and ate at the shelter that evening! Each one of them gave us profuse thanks for our timely service. As Mahatma Gandhi once said, "The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the lives of others.” Kids and adults alike did exactly this. In fact, many kids pledged not to waste any food after seeing the copious amount of people that did not have food at all. In the end, this will undoubtedly be remembered as a memorable experience by all of us who went there !

By

Ajjit Narayanan