Back in India, it is common practice to ‘(p)reserve’ leftover food from the previous days for the house help or the roaming alms taker.
In many orthodox families, these leftovers are assigned a special place, at bottom most tray in the refrigerator and sometimes out in the open, for, their consumption or even sharing of space with the day’s fresh cooking is taboo, and is vehemently opposed by the elders of the family. However, with the passage of time and widening of views, the religious aspect has bowed out and now this theory and practice of handing out leftovers and old, used out things to the ‘poor and needy’ has acquired a whole new aspect.
Once, a woman relative who had pushed food from the previous week into the innards of her refrigerator and gone on a trip handed it out to her maid servant when she chanced upon it a week after she returned home. With a look of glowing satisfaction over her charitable ways, she exclaimed, “What a blessing that we have someone to give these leftovers to! Else the whole thing would have gone waste. It is one good meal for these poor things and I am glad I am feeding them. It is still not rancid, you see.”
I blinked hard. Did she mean to sound pleased to have not wasted the food, or vain over her largesse, or was she merely shaking off a secret guilt of dumping something that was inedible for her family, but could mean a feast for the poor woman’s children?
“I am not sure if they should be having it. If it is not good enough for you or me, it isn’t good enough for them either.” I must have sounded oddly ecclesiastical and moralistic, but I spoke my mind.
“Oh, they are used to it. A little here or there doesn’t matter to them. They will add some spice, boil it and refresh it. It is better than throwing it in the bin. It is filling some empty stomachs, after all.” I gulped emptily, as she spoke those words of vindication.
Come to think of it, haven’t we all been agents of pseudo philanthropy at some time or the other? Remember how when we were asked to cough up relief material for the flood, tsunami, earth quake or famine affected people around the globe, we stuffed bags after bags of overused, frayed clothes that we had no place to keep in our house? How many times have we been guilty of finding relief appeals a means to get rid of the rubbish choking our closets, sometimes disposing even inner wear and towels! I have witnessed volunteers at pains to sift through mounds of refuse, separating the truly usable from the trash. Does it take too much of good sense to know that it is to real, living people like you and me, people at a disadvantage in a world of imbalances for no fault of theirs that we are passing this junk to in the name of charity?
For once, in this season of giving, let us get reasonable for the sake of our own conscience. Let us give only if we really have the heart to help and not to clear clutters or gain an ego high. What is old and decrepit to us is so to those whom we give. What is unpalatable or worse for wear to us is so to them too. Depositing bags full of unusable refuse makes a mockery of the fine virtue of charity. Let’s not wait for the use by date to pass. Let’s feed when the food is still fresh, clothe when the cotton is still crisp; let’s count those to whom we give as human beings made of the same elements and sensibilities as we are.
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