Kolkata students in Nepal with relief

KOLKATA: Students from various city colleges raised funds for earthquake survivors in Nepal and travelled to a remote village 20km east of Kathmandu to distribute relief material.
Posts on the monster quake on Facebook spurred 600 students from Calcutta University, Jadavpur University, Presidency University and Burdwan University into action. In less than a week, the students raised Rs 2.14 lakh.
“We wanted to reach out to the survivors and collected whatever people were willing to donate. Many students who travel by train collected contributions from fellow passengers. In addition, we collected clothes and medicine,” said Ronit Mukherjee, an international relations student from JU.
On April 30, a 15-member team set off for Siliguri with the cash, nine bags of clothes and a bag of medicine. In Siliguri, they purchased milk powder, biscuits, baby food, sanitary pads, tarpaulins, match sticks and candles. In all, the relief material weighed nearly 2 tonnes.
The team reached Kakarbhitta May 1. From there, five students received permission to proceed towards Kathmandu by land. After a grueling 14-hour drive, they finally reached Kathmandu on May 2.
“We still had a distance to go to reach out to the people we intended to help. After the two-hour ride, we reached Thankot. From there, we had to take a smaller vehicle to a village called Mashini, our final destination,” recounted Kingshuk Chattopadhyay, an ex-student of JU. When they reached Mashini, they were lost for words. “The village resembled the images of a long-lost civilization. We were amidst ruins of what was a village before the quake,” said Chattopadhyay.
From the ruins emerged survivors, 150-odd families, parched and hungry. The relief that the students from Bengal had brought to them was the first since the earthquake. “Bhagwan ne farishta bhej diya (The almighty has sent angels),” was only what they could blurt out.