“Jeevakarunyam (compassion towards all living beings) is the key to the abode of liberation.” To take it from street to street and house to house and help people attain it, Deepam Trust, Velachery, Chennai, has undertaken many achievements, strategies and activities, and the Mobile Dharmachalai is one of them.
Poor families without means in places such as Velachery and Kalkuttai live in houses with a roof of plastic or tin sheets and a torn saree hung up as a door. Like a bird's nest, no door, no toilet, and no food for the next meal. Can mothers with small children come to our Nithya Deepa Dharmachalai? Can the blind, the physically disabled, the elderly and the hungry whom we see on the streets come to the Nithya Deepa Dharmachalai?
A worldwide charitable organisation that works for the welfare and education of children published a report a few months ago. When two 10-year-old boys in a slum were interviewed and asked what their wish was, they said, “We wish not to die!” When asked why they had this fear, they said: “There were ten of us friends in this lane. We used to roam everywhere together from morning till night. But in this one year, eight of them have died. They said it was due to some disease or other!” The organisation concluded that the lack of healthy food was the cause and began working on many fronts.
For us, healthy food is certainly needed, and we are happy when it is available. But even ordinary food to satisfy hunger is becoming hard to get. Seeing this, “Vallalar” says that “whenever one sees, hears of or comes to know of someone suffering, one must run and relieve it.” This can be found in Jeevakarunya Ozhukkam. To put into practice what he said in that prose work, Deepam Trust created a “Mobile Dharmachalai” and has been feeding the hungry for the past 10 years.