Monday, January 10, 2011

Monday's Inspiration Celebration - Narayanan Krishnan


Image from the Akshaya Trust website

Around the holidays, the wonderful blog Operation Nice posted a description of Narayanan Krishnan's work feeding the poor in his home town in India:

Narayanan Krishnan, a former chef in a five star restaurant in India...was interviewing for lucrative culinary positions in Europe. But that all changed when [he] decided to make a quick trip home to his native Madurai, a small community in south India, before leaving to interview for a position in Switzerland...Narayanan Krishnan was so troubled by the image of an elderly man in his community eating his own waste out of desperate hunger, that a week later he quit his job in a 5 star restaurant to feed the hungry in his own community.

Krishnan founded the nonprofit, Akshaya Trust in 2003 and today he feeds nearly 400 people daily. At only 29 years old, Krishnan has fed over 1.2 million meals to the hungry, according to CNN. Every day, he wakes up at 4 am, cooks a simple hot meal and then, along with his team, loads it in a van and travels about 200 km feeding the homeless in Madurai, Tamil Nadu. Krishnan feeds, often with his hands, almost 400 destitute people every day. And for those who need it, he provides a free haircut too.


If you find this as touching and inspiring as I do, you can watch Narayanan Krishnan in action in this video.