Kathmandu: With the government failing to take care of people lying on the lower rungs of social strata, it is social organizations and private citizens who have come to the rescue. Bhushan Kumar Shrestha is one of them. As the president of Lions Club of Kathmandu Social Friends, Shrestha, along with his team, has served food and medicine to the needy.
Shrestha recalls an incident where a pregnant woman came to him asking for food. Her husband had not been home for days, and she had nothing to feed herself. Living with hunger for days would have had a detrimental effect on her and her unborn child’s health.
Shrestha also shared about his encounter with blind people living in the cold streets around Pashupatinath area. They cannot work, and there are no people around to serve them anything. Shrestha became a godsend to them, when he provided them with food that they desperately needed.
Amid the lockdown, lots of people have come to Kathmandu for their treatment, and have been stranded in the city with nowhere to go. These people have no other option but to beg for food and other requirements. Shrestha has helped them too.
“These are some of the disheartening stories, out of thousands of other people who are suffering in the same manner or even worse,” he said.
The 35-year-old has been risking his life, scouting places, in and out of Kathmandu Valley, in search of people who are in desperate need of help. He has been deceived and lied to many times, he said, but that does not stop him from helping people who genuinely need help.
The 35-year-old has been risking his life, scouting places, in and out of Kathmandu Valley, in search of people who are in desperate need of help.
“I am more careful now than before,” said Shrestha. “I look out for frauds, but there are many genuine people in need of my help, so I will not stop.” Shrestha believes that one small effort from a person can go a long way.
While he looks out for people in dire need of help, some people come looking for him with hope. He does not just provide them with food but helps them in whatever ways he can. His one small effort of providing medicine to a family saves a child from being an orphan, a mother from losing her child, and staves off tragedy in a family.
He helps these people not because he has something to gain out of it, but because he believes that being a human means to look out for each other, especially during a tragedy of this scale.
“If our fellow doctors and soldiers are keeping their lives at risk to help others,” he says, “so can I.”
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