One Man. No Sleep. Feeds 170,000 Flood Victims

By Brianna Acuesta

This Indian restaurant owner cooked meals to send to 170,000 people after a deluge hit his city during monsoon season.

Food scarcity is a huge epidemic throughout the world, and oftentimes those it affects increases when natural disasters hit. One such area that was impacted was Chennai, India, when a deluge worse than any recorded in the last 100 years hit the city during monsoon season.

After being trapped in his own flooded house for a day, Santhosh Muruganantha, a restaurant owner, knew that others were worse off than his family and likely did not have access to food. Fortunately, food is one thing that Muruganantha had a plethora of at that moment, so he began cooking non-stop to put together food boxes and send them out to victims in need.

This turned out to be about 170,000 people, which would have been overwhelming for Muruganantha all alone. However, word of his efforts spread quickly and hundreds of volunteers showed up in the following days to provide assistance by cooking, organizing, and delivering the boxes to people.

The take-out restaurant owner said that he didn’t stop cooking for 4 days, going without sleep or rest in order to help as many people as he could.

He also stated that he would not have been able to provide as much help to those in need if it weren’t for the generous contributions donated through Milaap, an Indian crowdfunding website. “Eighty percent of the credit goes to the contributors,” he said.

Muruganantha was not the only citizen who helped the severely affected victims, as many opened their homes to displaced people and other restaurants also provided food to people who walked in. He was one of several heroes that saved many lives by detecting a need and filling that gap as best he could.

Watch the inspirational video below to hear Muruganantha talk about this experience:

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