It was the Calcutta of the 70s. There was a knock on the door, but I was too lazy to react. However, I reacted to the second one because not only the decibel count went up, there was a certain amount of desperation, preceded by a sense of deep anxiety, in the bang.

On opening the door I saw a middle-aged gentleman and two teenagers. They were good enough to be called good-looking, but totally unkempt and kind of emaciated. Their clothes showed that they hadn’t slept for some nights. We discovered later that they couldn’t sleep because they were being hounded by political bullies. And sleep becomes the first casualty when torment decides to play the irrepressible sergeant.

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If they are leaving millions hungry to finance successful wars then they are recycling human grief to win political glory

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Anyway, I invited them in and the man flew into my father’s arms displaying a rare form of affection. The man was meeting my dad after nearly 25 years. He and his sons had fled their country to escape violent political persecution, they told us.


 This photo is used for illustrative purpose.

Barely 15 minutes into the meeting, the man asked my mother for something to eat. They were served dinner and the way they gorged on the meal made it amply clear that they hadn’t had food for days. That sight hasn’t left me and was my first experience of starving men’s response to food. After that night I never took my meals for granted.  

This piece will remain incomplete without the discussion I intend to have about a set of hungry children. I was ambling down a popular street in a popular city of a popular country when a woman, with two little girls, stopped me and sought my help. I was going for my wallet when she stopped me and said, “I am not a beggar, my children are very hungry, you think you could please buy them some food?” I did what I could, but the helpless mother’s words left my vision of social inequity changed once and for all. They underlined my subsequent belief that at the top of life’s menu was food. Everything could wait, but not hunger.


 This photo is used for illustrative purpose.

A recent report that one in nine people still do not have enough to eat should make our leaders, especially signatories to arms deals, review their policies. If they are leaving millions hungry to finance successful wars then they are recycling human grief to win political glory.

They will do well to remember that the flagstaff of victory can’t be a pile of helpless lives.

Therefore, I was really happy when the United Nations’ World Food Programme (WFP) won the Nobel Peace Prize some days ago.

WFP’s boss David Beasley rightly said the prize was a call to action that no one should go hungry with the wealth in the world today.

But fighting the scourge of starvation can’t be left to WFP. If the world is a family, which it is, then all of us have to get involved.

One couldn’t have agreed more with the UAE Minister of State for Food and Water Security, Mariam Bint Mohammed Almheiri, who speaking on World Food Day 2020, said, “All members of the community have a role to play in finding solutions for sustainable food production at home, be it through urban farming, sustainable food purchasing and consumption patterns, or reducing food waste.”  

Well, I hope very soon we should be able to bring an end to reports about hunger. Our appetite for answering unanswered appetites should never be allowed to sag.