Yesterday, I saw @srini091's tweet about the requirement for freshly cooked food for the guest workers heading back from Chennai central and something in that tweet called out to me.

A thread on gratitude and bulk cooking puliyogre for distribution.

Our usual means of contribution is via money. But this time, something inside me asked the question - "What more do I have that I can give?". In that moment, @prasannavika and I decided that we wanted to use our able physical bodies and do something for them.

The motivation was simple: We are living such comfortable lives built atop their efforts -- construction workers, sanitation workers, cooks, cleaners, whatnot. They're in every single segment, helping us invisibly to more visibly live our lives.

And this presented an opportunity for the tables to be turned -- for us to be the invisible workforce that helped them in their journeys back home.

We started by working out the math behind the whole thing. We needed to understand how much rice can be made in one shot

in the cookers that we had (amma gave hers too). We had to figure out how much puli paste we needed to add to the proportion of the cooked rice as per MTR's standards and we had to set up an assembly line to make sure that the packets were ready for distribution

In the 6.5L cooker, we cooked 650gm of raw rice at a time, amounting to 2.2kg. For this we used 220gm of paste

In the 7.5L cooker, we cooked 750gm of raw rice at a time, amounting to 2.4kg. For this we used 235gm of paste

We had a simple weighing scale that helped us measure this out and standardize. @prasannavika was in charge of washing the rice, putting it to cook and then cooling it down for the mixing process.

We had a handy chart (jugaad-ly put together with masking tape and sharpie courtesy the artist) in case we forgot the proportions.

A standardized input would guarantee the best output.

Once the rice cooled down, we put it in a large utensil and added the right amount of the paste and got to mixing. My father in law (a man greatly devoted to social work) was also on the team and mixing was his forte

PS: He's the one we go to for all mixed rice needs

Aside: Time was of the essence and given the current situation, procuring gloves and other protective equipment was going to slow us down. So we resorted to being as safe as we could by following proper hand and body hygiene

Once the rice was mixed and ready, we gave it some more time to cool down. The cooler it got, the better. Since we don't want any moisture forming inside the packets, this might spoil the rice.

We then extended our jugaad on-the-wall notes to a full fledged dashboard to keep track of how much we were producing and dubbed the entire thing:

"Project Puliyogre"

Each cooker was used, cooled, washed and then reused. Things went on like a well oiled machine. None of us had any experience cooking at this scale but I guess the intention really helped all 3 of us to concentrate our efforts to what mattered the most.

We ended up making 102 packets of Puliyogre. It took us about 6 hours to do this - 7:30AM to 1:30PM. Non stop.

We then put everything in the center of the hall, put 2 lines of lakshman rekha around it and then a line of turmeric+chilly paste to keep away our ant friends

The rest of the family then came together by 5:30PM to tie the packets and ready it for @srini091's pickup.

He came on time, picked them up and off he went with his big heart and boot full of food & toys to Central station

All 102 packets were distributed to our guest worker friends. This was such a humbling experience. We owe so much to these people who work in the background just so we can have such great lives.

Today was an exercise in learning to give back. I'm sure we'll do more of this.

I cannot end this thread without conveying our many thanks to @srini091 for being such a beacon during this times, guiding us with his experience. He's such an inspiration and really an asset to this land. Thank you Srini. You're amazing. Your energy and focus is something else.