A 97-year-old grandmother is following her life’s motto: “As long as your hands and feet work, use them to serve others” and feeding the homeless across London. Nisharat Kaur Matharu has been making hundreds of meals a week – creamy lentils, Indian-style rice pudding with cardamom and nuts, crispy pastry with cumin seeds – for the homeless since 2017.
The food is served by Hope for Southall Street Homeless, a community initiative which runs a night shelter and drop-in centre in the area of west London. She first arrived in the UK as a 54-year-old mother-of-five in 1976.
Nisharat’s 67-year-old daughter, Kulwant, in a statement to Al Jazeera said, “My mother was born in Punjab and when she was six months old, she lost her mother,” she explains, the two now sitting in Nisharat’s impeccably neat, white-walled living room with its large industrial sewing machine in the corner. “My granddad remarried soon after – another arranged marriage – and when he and his wife had their first child … the step mum decided she didn’t want her.”
Nisharat was two years old when she was left on a pile of rubbish outside her family’s house in Moga, Punjab. Her aunt took her to her paternal grandmother’s house, where according to Al Jazeera Nisharat was kept as a child labourer, responsible for cooking, cleaning and any other chores that were assigned to her.
Speaking about her desire to serve others, Nisharat said, “Through sewa is meva [which means through selfless service you get goodness]. I recite Waheguru [wonderful God] when I am cooking and it’s this blessing from God that adds the flavour in the food”.
