Today is April 24th and we are travelling to Dudiya Pokra, a small village on the outskirts of Varanasi for today’s Just One program.  The village consists of small houses with mud walls and dilapidated roofs, but it is increasingly surrounded by large, modern buildings as Varanasi grows.    The village itself is clean and tidy, although the poverty here is very obvious.

The children rush to greet us when we arrive and their dirty faces look up at us with their eyes shining. I move towards one of the children and immediately all the children eagerly reach out their hands.

Ravindrapuri is a large area in a relatively well-developed part of Varanasi.  When traveling here on April 8th, 2015, we see large free-standing houses along wide roads.  The area is more upscale than many of the areas we visit in the Just One program, but we soon realize the food distribution is not for those who live on this road.  

 We turn down a narrow laneway and enter a crowded area of jumbled two-storey buildings, in various stages of completion, known as Bakari village.  Mothers with toddlers on their hips or hanging onto their legs, stand in open doorways.  When I glance behind them into the dark single rooms where they live with their families, I can see their meager living conditions.  

Kadipur is the most distant slum village that Just One serves.  It is in Shivpur, a very large area northeast of Varanasi.  Today is March 30, and the weather is very windy, with a refreshing drizzle that never completely soaks the skin, nor allows the skin to get dry.   So ASMITA, Just One’s local partner, light the cooking fire inside an enclosed brick shanty to protect it from the elements.  Fortunately for us, the weather remains constant and enables a very cool and invigorating feeding to occur.

The villagers from this area are called the ‘musa-har’, meaning the rodent eaters.  They have a long history of eating mice and rats.  Their skin is almost black in color.  It is said the practice of eating rodents has caused the skin to be so dark.  

For nine days at the end of March, Hindus in Varanasi, India and around the globe, celebrated their devotion to Mother Divine during the holiday of Navaratri. At the end of this holiday, on March 29th, the Sai Maa Vishnu Shakti Trust fed 250 people a special meal of vegetables, paneer (cheese), puri (bread), and kheer (sweetened milk) at the Sathya Sai Maa Moksha Dham.

In addition to the Indian men, women, and children, who were fed, foreign guests from Germany and Netherlands joined the India team to help in the feeding. Each gravitated to a particular area of service with one watching over the children while others served food or water.

On March 14th, Just One held a feeding in the slum area of Chowka Ghat, serving a simple meal of vegetables and fried bread to 260 children. In India, space is scarce and precious so those of extremely low-income often live in the unlikeliest of places. Chowka Ghat is one of these  places.  The people are illegally occupying a space just next to the train tracks and in the rainy season the water fills their living area. Despite very loud trains and occasionally flooded homes, a community has grown here.

When I’m with the community, I don’t notice the trains or the small space. Instead I feel a peace and tranquillity of acceptance from the people.