There are few places that have been hit harder by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021 than India — a fact that has not been lost on Poplar Bluff businesswoman Babita Patnaik, who grew up there.
“Since the second wave of COVID-19 hit India, I have been worried and anguished for my homeland,” Patnaik, who runs Sunrise Home Care in Poplar Bluff with her husband Subrat Mishra, said. “India has suffered greatly without any immediate sign of relief. Around 330,000 people have died due to COVID-19 and continue to do so. Jobs have been lost and families are facing periods of starvation, scarcity of oxygen, and huge medical expenses.
“Ongoing lockdowns to control the infection have made it very difficult for people to live a normal life. Many kids are being orphaned due to the demise of both parents from COVID-19. People are struggling to get nutritious meals, and it is really hard to survive this pandemic.”
However, Patnaik and her family decided to do something about it. Patnaik, her daughter Adeeti Mishra and Mishra’s friend, Emma Papanicolaou, recently held a fundraiser, where they sold homemade Indian cuisine and donated all of the proceeds from it to help people in India.
“As I conversed with my daughter, Adeeti Mishra, who is a high-schooler at PBHS, about my wish to contribute, she suggested that we should do an emergency fundraiser for supporting the struggling families in India,” Patnaik said. “She started a food drive and we decided to cook and sell homemade Indian food, donating 100% of the money to the people in India who need food and cash support to survive.”
One of the dishes they made is butter chicken and basmati rice.
“Butter chicken is a rich, creamy, tomato sauce with Indian spices and chicken served over a plate of steamy basmati rice,” Patnaik said. “I uploaded a picture to Facebook on May 19 of Adeeti and Emma cooking with the caption, ‘Emergency COVID-19 India Relief Fundraiser’ and orders began to roll in rapidly.”
Patnaik started out with 30 requested orders of butter chicken, then progressed to other orders of Indian meals, such as chicken biryani, vegetable biryani, cabbage fry, green bean fry, lentil soup and chickpea curry.
In addition to her daughter and her daughter’s friend, Patnaik’s friends, Zahida Haq and Amber Mirza, helped her cook, while May Jenson helped her get the word out for the fundraiser.
“For the next five days, the house smelled like a fancy Indian restaurant with a rich and pleasant aroma of spices,” Patnaik said.
When it was all said and done, Patnaik, Mishra and Papanicolaou raised $4,000 to help the people of India — and they might not be done helping yet.
“Although Poplar Bluff is a small town, the people who live here have big hearts,” Patnaik said. “I wish to continue raising money to support this urgent cause with the help of our community. We were able to raise $4,000 — and all this money will be donated for feeding the hungry, supporting people who lost their families and helping the orphanages who are supporting the kids whose parents died in this pandemic.”
Patnaik said she is “overwhelmed” with gratitude for how people rose to the occasion to help her and her native land. She said people also donated money on top of buying food at the fundraiser.
“I always believed in being a part of the solution rather than the problem,” she said. “The community of Poplar Bluff has helped me in doing so. I am humbled and very thankful for this act of kindness towards this humanitarian cause.”