New Delhi: Amid the Ukraine crisis, the Maharaja, the oldest Indian restaurant in Budapest, is providing free meals to Indian students being evacuated from war-torn Ukraine via the Hungarian capital. The restaurant's owner, Kulwinder Singh Jham, said that being a devout Sikh, he immediately started langar (community kitchen) to serve free food.
He further told that 'It was Monday, I did not know that their (students) number would increase so fast. 300 students arrived in Budapest on Tuesday. According to the report, he told that on Wednesday afternoon, we prepared 800 meals and in the night another 1,500 students reached. Jham, who has lived in Europe for 40 years and founded the Maharaja in 1994, said the students were expecting assistance from the Indian embassy. He said that the embassy initially provided easily available food like sandwiches, but the students needed hot cooked food.
Jham further said that many of the students were hungry and suffering. He said that the students had to go through terrible experiences. Some boys said they were offered money and rifles to fight for Ukraine. All were stopped by soldiers at the border because Ukraine does not allow men between the ages of 16 and 60 to leave the country. The students had to prove that they are not citizens of Ukraine. Most of them preferred to board trains to Hungary, thinking that the Russians could stop and seize buses to Romania and Poland.
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