Narayana Seva

A man once brought an elderly woman to an old-age home. “She has lived on our street a long time,” he said. “She is destitute — I hoped you could give her shelter.” While he was speaking, the friend beside him turned and asked quietly: did you bring your own mother here?

We were left without an answer. There are elders today who are not only neglected by their children but reduced by them to destitution. Nitya Narayana Seva began for them — to return the love, the care, the trust and the courage that had gone out of their lives. A meal is only where it starts.

Breakfast, then lunch

The seva runs twice over. At 8:00 AM breakfast is carried out to the elderly mothers living in the streets near the Kuteer. Between 11:30 AM and 12:30 PM the day’s lunch is packed into carriers and taken out on the round.

Who we serve, and how we find them

Volunteers walk the streets of Puttaparthi and six surrounding villages, asking residents who among them is alone. Those we find are entered into the daily round. We call them Narayanas — the Divine, come to receive.

• Around 40 people in Puttaparthi town receive lunch each day.
• Around 14 elderly people in the surrounding villages receive lunch each day.
• Beyond the meal, we ask after their health, their family, their difficulties — and help where we can.

What is cooked

Everything is prepared fresh each morning in the Kuteer kitchen: dal, a curry, sambar, white rice, ragi balls and buttermilk. It is packed into steel carriers and delivered by members and volunteers — warm, and by hand.

The 23rd of every month

To mark Bhagavan Baba’s birth date, Anna Prasadam has been offered at the Kuteer on the 23rd of every month since December 2017. It began with 76 people. It now welcomes around 1,200.

Local residents come, and families from the surrounding villages, and patients who have attended that morning’s medical camps, and pilgrims visiting the town. Lunch is sambar, curry, white rice, a fried appetiser, curd rice, pickle, fresh fruit and a sweet. Everyone sits together, and everyone is served the same food.

That gathering is the point as much as the meal is.

The 5th and the 11th — at the mobile camps

Sri Sathya Sai mobile medical camps are held at Patha Bathalapalli and Veldurthi, and patients travel in from the villages around them. Neither place has a hotel or an eatery of any kind, so a person who comes for treatment in the morning has nowhere to eat before going home.

On the 5th and the 11th of every month we serve lunch at those camps to 350 to 400 patients — so that nobody has to choose between seeing a doctor and eating that day.