Jagdish Lal Ahuja - Man who sold his Property to feed the Needy

The first step toward change is awareness.

For 80-year-old, Jagdish Lal Ahuja feeding the poor and needy in Chandigarh is the utmost priority routine of his life.

  

Born in Peshawar, Jagdish came to Patiala during the partition of 1947, when he was just 12. To earn his living, he relied on selling candies to local refugees.

In 1956, with just a few rupees in his hands, Jagdish came to Chandigarh with hope of making big in this city. He started off by selling bananas at roadside, and soon went onto being the ‘Banana King’.

After all those years of hardwork and patience, success started flooding his life. But, on January 20, 2000, something changed.

As he was driving by PGI Chandigarh, Jagdish saw a man distributing rice to people sitting outside the hospital wall. It was his son’s eighth birthday the next day.

“Once, while passing through PGI, I saw a man sitting near the boundary wall of the institute, who was distributing rice to poor people. I asked if no one stops him, he said no. The next day, that was January 21, 2000, I started distributing free food to people outside PGI.”

On this occasion, he organized a langar to seek blessings for his son and distributed free meal comprising, three chappatis, aaloo channa, halwa, a banana and a pack of sweets or biscuits.

At the completion, he felt a sense of sweet satisfaction and ever since that day, Jagdish Lal Ahuja, without fail on daily basis organized langar for 33 years and his pursuit is to keep it going till he dies.

As he says, “Yeh langar nahi rukega... Jab tak main zinda hu, Baba ka langar chalta rahega.”

Tranlslation: "This langar will not stop... Baba's langar will keep on running as long as I'm alive"

He serves free meals which include chapattis, dal, halwa, a banana and a pack of sweets or biscuits.


Things can go wrong on a day, bad weather could ruin everyone’s schedule but nothing changes for the kind man. Whenever he runs out of money, to fund the langar, Jagdish sells off his property. Till date he has sold properties worth Rs 7 crore.

Apart from food, Jagdish Lal Ahuja also donates blankets, socks, shoes and sweaters to the poor.

He is widely known as ‘Baba’ out of love and respect.

“Serving food to the poor gives me immense satisfaction and peace of mind. Moreover, the spark in the eyes of children and smiles on their lips when they see the food, is what motivates me to do more and more for them. Until my last breath, I will keep serving them free meal.”