Sonu Sood
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Philanthropy
2020
Avijit Ghosh, August 25, 2020: The Times of India
If you are a medical student stuck in Kyrgyzstan, a Chittoor farmer whose daughters must pull the plough because he can’t afford a pair of oxen or a priest who needs money to carry out a knee surgery for his offspring — get the message out to Sonu Sood. Help might be at hand. In the past few months, the 47-year-old Bollywood actor has not only become an everyday Santa Claus for the disadvantaged and the desperate, he has emerged as India’s chief minister of hope.
Sonu’s Twitter timeline is a document of everything India has endured since the nationwide lockdown in March. It’s a bulletin board for the jobless, the stranded and the ailing — ordinary people handcuffed by problems and with nowhere to go. But the modelturned-actor’s account — he has 3.2 million followers — is also a heart-tugging story of a film star who walks his tweets. And who doesn’t stop walking, even though the lockdown is long gone.
The lockdown had created a food crisis, especially for the lowest in the survival pyramid. Sonu started distributing meals in Thane. One day, a group of 350 migrants wanted him to pack food for their 10-day trek back to Karnataka. He asked them to wait for a few days and got necessary permission to send them home by bus. But driving back to home, when he saw an unending caravan of weary men, women and children trudging along the highway, the big picture flashed in his mind.
“I realised that this is not the story of 350 people but of millions of migrants across India. From that day, I began connecting people across states. We have sent close to 1.5 lakh people home,” Sonu says. In June, he was also dragged into a verbal crossfire between the Maharashtra state government and the opposition, but the actor sorted things out.
Sonu was born in Patiala, brought up in Moga; both Punjab towns. His father ran a cloth shop and his mother taught English in a local college. He grew up watching her coach college students for free at home. Every week his father hosted langars outside his shop. The teenager internalised empathy from their actions. “They were my school. From them I learnt to step forward and help the needy,” says the actor over the phone. In recent weeks, Sonu has expanded his horizons. While dropping off migrants to airports, railway stations and bus stands, he would often wonder what would happen when they come back to Mumbai. “That’s when I thought, I must generate jobs for them,” he says.
An electronics engineer by training, Sonu had built a circle of friends during his college days in Nagpur. They came together with other professionals to produce Pravasi Rojgar, a free portal and app for job seekers ranging from DTP operators, drivers, plumbers and accountants. On August 15, he tweeted, “300,000+ jobs committed, 20,000+ interviews in progress.”
“About 10,000 have already started their work. We are trying to upscale this initiative by connecting with 8,000-10,000 schools across the country. We will teach them and place them in the kind of jobs they want. In the next 6-8 months, we will get connected to the rest of the country,” he says. His missions were mostly self-funded, he says, before others joined in.
Several Bollywood personalities have offered their chequebooks and hearts to aid the needy in recent months. And the beneficiaries have responded with return gifts of gratitude: letters, notes, paintings. A pregnant woman from Darbhanga, whom he had helped return home, has named her son after him. Someone has sent him a doll of his mother. “There is a moment every day that touches your heart and makes you believe that you are doing something right in life,” he says.
“I wasn’t trained to get people back home from Kyrgyzstan or Uzbekistan. Speaking to ambassadors, the Union ministry of external affairs, getting landing permissions — I had never done that before. But I had the confidence it would happen,” he says. And he has retained his sense of humour. Someone tweeted asking for a lift to a liquor shop; Sonu replied, “Brother, I can only drop you from liquor store to your home.” His film career is in fine fettle too. The actor of Dabangg, Jodhaa Akbar and Arundhati (Telugu) will be shooting for Yash Raj Film’s historical Prithviraj, the 12th century Rajput king. Sonu plays the poet Chand Bardai, who wrote Prithviraj Raso. “I am getting interesting scripts, roles that I had never done before,” he says. There’s talk Sonu will join politics. “I am in a good space. I want to stay before the camera for the next few years. Then let us see what happens.”
