Travelling for miles to feed the hungry

HYDERABAD: Dasari Durga Rao, a 34-year-old fish merchant, lives in the Ranigari Thota Colony on the banks of Krishna river in Vijayawada of Andhra Pradesh.

Affected by polio when he was two, Rao has been displaying a large heart in feeding the migrant workers and poor people, ever since the country went into lockdown nearly three months ago to contain the spread of Covid-19.

His schedule is fixed. Each day, Rao rises at 4am, gets on his threewheeler Scooty (specially designed as he was affected by polio) and travels to Guntur town about 40km away. There, he sets up shop at a footpath near the main vegetable market and sells fish. “Since I bring quality fish, I have dedicated customers who don’t go anywhere else,” he said.

“Luckily, my business has been going on comfortably and I haven’t suffered any loss till now,” he said. Fish, like mutton and chicken was an essential item during the lockdown.

On an average, Rao earns ₹10,000 to ₹12,000 a day during the weekdays and a little more on Sunday when sales are higher.

Back home, he gives ₹2,500 – one-fourth his savings — to his wife, Nagalakshmi. The rest, he said, he spends on buying food and ration for the poor.

“Every day I used to watch hundreds of migrant workers, along with their children, walking for miles on the Guntur-Vijayawada national highway (NH-16) and I felt bad for them... So, I thought of doing whatever little I can to mitigate their hunger,” he said.

Three times a week, after winding up his fish trade for the day, Rao returns home on his Scooty to pick up food packets. He then rides all along the GunturVijayawada route to distribute these packets, which contain rice, lentils, curry and sambar. He ties these packets in plastic trays, and attaches them to his vehicle.

Earlier, Nagalakshmi would cook the food and pack it. “Soon, I started serving a lot more people. So I engaged a cook from a restaurant. On an average, I’d say we have been feeding 400-500 people a day. That comes to around ₹16,000 a day,” he said.

Rao has been doing this since the lockdown was first imposed. He has also distributed groceries and vegetables to the underprivileged.

Durga Rao, who studied up to Class 10, inherited the fish-selling business from his father, who died in 2010. “Earlier, I used to work with a prawns’ merchant, but after my father’s death, I got into this fish-selling which has become my livelihood now,” Rao, a father of three school-going daughters, said.

Rao was inspired to do philanthropy three years ago after an incident that changed his life.

Durga Rao also gets a government pension as a person living with a disability which amounts to ₹3,000 a month. He uses all of this for his philanthropy. Hindustan Times and Facebook have partnered to bring you 15 stories of HT Salutes. HT is solely responsible for the editorial content of this series. This is the concluding piece in this series.