kolkata four friends sat down to hang out one evening in 2016 a couple of months before durga puja the idea was to discuss a plan that one of them had to bounce it off among the other three fortunately they were very excited at the idea and thus started their project to feed kolkatait started as one atm to ladle out free food to the hungry in a period of just nine months its gone up to three atms and if things go according to plan therell be two more before puja this yeartogether the three food atms as the project is being lovingly called feed at least 2000 people each day the first one came up on the em bypass at uttarpanchanna gram the second opposite ladies park on cit road and the third one inside ramleela maidan off moulali the fourth is supposed to come up at bhowanipore near chakraberia and then a fifth near the 8b bus stand at jadavpurrestaurateur asif ahmed and his three entrepreneur friends prakash nahata rahul agarwal and nirmal bajaj decided to start their endeavour as a sort of experiment by connecting with clubs that organise puja with the first letters of their names they formed pran a group to fight for a hungerfree kolkata almost every club cooks and feeds bhog on all four days of puja we requested them to cook some extra bhog so that we could distribute it among pavementdwellers ahmed says we were able to convince 15 clubs and they gave us immense quantities of food which we were able to distribute among hungry pavementdwellers the gratitude and satisfaction we saw on those poor faces was the incentive that sowed the seeds of the food atm projectahmed first turned his attention towards the food that his restaurant was left with at the end of each day at his uttar panchannagram outlet he got his workers to cool pack and refrigerate the food so that it could be distributed his friends got a real estate company to donate a specially designed refrigerator kept outside his restaurant packed with food twice a day the food was distributed to the needy we started on august 15 2017 to emphasize the freedom factor what is the value of freedom unless we are able to give freedom from hunger to everyone in the city ahmed saysbengali new years day was celebrated on april 15 a little differently at the ramleela maidan members of the entally yuvak brinda joined hands with pran to start the citys third food atm a special room was built beside the park where the refrigerator is kept stocked with food water and cold drinks to be distributed among the homeless twice each day at least 10 restaurants in the vicinity have been sending their packed excess food to the food atm we just had to visit the restaurant owners and tell them about our intent and they readily agreed if the city restaurants stop wasting their leftover food