KASARAGOD: Three weathered men were squatting on the platform inside the deserted Bus Stand Complex in Kasaragod. It was 1 pm, and the sun was beating down. In a few minutes, more men -- young and old, healthy and with disabilities, Malayalees, and Kannadigas, and Tamil and Telugu -- started trickling in to form a crowd. By 1.10 pm, an autorickshaw with mid-day meals pulled up in front of the closed Hotel Swamy Koragajja inside the bus stand. After a couple of minutes, the men lined up in front of the eatery.
One of the first men in the queue was Vishwanath Shetty, around 80 years old with a severe hunchback. Shetty -- a native of Uppala, 30 km away -- used to work for a restaurant in Kasaragod town till five years ago. Now, the veranda of Badriya Hotel, another restaurant in the town, is his home.
Around 70 persons in Kasaragod town are surviving on the food served free of cost by the restaurant during the lockdown imposed to curb the spread of coronavirus.
The restaurant -- named after a god worshipped across Tulunad -- is run by three friends Vinod Kumar of Mattanoor in Kannur district, Charan Raj of Adukkathabayal in Kasaragod town, and Shijoy K Chelery of Kannur.
They also run canteens in the Collectorate and the Office of the District Police Chief.
In the afternoon of May 11, three days after the Kerala government imposed the lockdown, Charan Raj saw Ramanna, a 65-year-old ragpicker in the bus stand. "Since I often see him near the bus stand, I casually asked him if he had lunch," he said.
With tears in his eyes, Ramanna said he had not eaten for the past three days. "I saw a handful of flattened rice spilled from his waist pouch," Charan Raj said.
Charan Raj asked Ramanna to wait and he would get him food. "But he told that there were 10 more persons like him who had not eaten for days," he said.
So Charan Raj said he would get them food for all. "The 10 persons became 30, and 30 became 40 persons. Now around 40 persons wait for our meals in the afternoon and around 60 persons come for dinner," said Vinod Kumar.
Kolande Yesu M (43), a mason from Tiruvannamalai in Tamil Nadu, who was having lunch from Koragajja restaurant, said he got just two or three days or jobs in a week. "I will go home as soon as the lockdown is lifted," he said. He has two teenage daughters and a 12-year-old son back home.
Mahantesh (19) from Gadag district in Karnataka said he came to Kasaragod four months ago looking for a job. Basappa H (60) from Hubli in Karnataka, said he came to Kasaragod one year ago. "I thought I would make some money and return home. But I hardly get any job now," he said.
Moideen Kunhi Poliyil, a native of Malappuram, used to operate a rock-breaking air compressor. He stopped working one year ago when a bus ran over his leg in Mangaluru. He made Kasaragod his home. "The food they serve is like what I had eaten at home long years ago. Today, they served chicken, too. God will bless them," he said.
Vinod Kumar, Charan Raj, and Shijoy said they were hardly making any money from the canteen business. In March 2020, they won the bid for the canteen at the Collectorate. "But one week after we set up the canteen, the lockdown was imposed," said Shijoy, a BCom graduate. Charan Raj and Vinod Kumar had studied only up to class 10.
This March, the trio won the bid for the canteen in the office of the district police chief. "Now we are in debt of Rs 60,000," said Shijoy. "But we are also growing."
They said they would continue to provide food free of cost to all those who come to the restaurant till the lockdown was lifted.
"We are serving them the same food we are making for the officials," said Vinod Kumar, the main cook of the canteen.