Through community meals
What's unique about Chandanki, a village in Gujarat? Here, food isn’t cooked in any house. Instead, food for everyone is prepared in one place, where all the residents gather to sit and eat together. This is Chandanki’s antidote to loneliness.
With a majority of its youngsters migrating to cities in India and abroad, Chandanki was left with a large number of senior citizens. A decade earlier, it had a population of over a thousand, but today it has around 500 people, most of whom are between 55 and 85 years of age. Many of these elderly people would cook food once a day only. Also, elderly women who had health problems found it hard, if not impossible, to cook meals.
To address these issues, a group of villagers started a community kitchen. For a small fee, Chandanki’s residents get access to two meals a day prepared by hired cooks. The lunch includes dal, rice, chapatti, sabzi and a dessert. For dinner, there is khichdi, kadhi, bhakri (rotis made from millet) and sabzi. Additionally, namkeen (which includes pakodas made from methi or fenugreek leaves), dhokla and idli-sambar are also served.
The meals are eaten in a solarpowered air-conditioned hall adjacent to the community kitchen. The dining hall has thus emerged as a space where all the inhabitants of Chandanki gather together and share their joys and sorrows over their meals. During weekends, their grown-up children (who now reside in cities) come to Chandanki to visit them and they too join in the community meals.
Interestingly, the sarpanch of the village, Poonambhai Patel, left his home in Ahmedabad and moved to Chandanki to supervise the community kitchen properly. The practice of cooking and consuming community meals is not just about food. It is also about strengthening the social fabric of a people and nurturing them. Chandanki’s future plans include constructing a park to further this feeling of togetherness among its inhabitants.
