Seva with Love

This short RSSB video, Seva with Love: Preparing Packed Meals, documents the Dera’s response to the local conditions during this period of lockdown due to the COVID-19 virus. Many people in the villages surrounding Dera are daily wage workers. With the lockdown they were unable to work and could not earn money to feed their families. Realizing this Baba Ji quickly mobilized Dera sevadars to prepare packed meals for delivery to the surrounding villages. The video shows the organizational skills and the loving dedication of the sevadars who on short notice were able to produce over 125,000 packed meals a day for local distribution. The video details the step-by-step process required to make such an enormous quantity of food on a daily basis.

Length: 7:06 minutes
Download (113MB) | YouTube

Captions for: Seva with Love - Preparing Packed Meals

Overview of Packed Meal Seva
Over 125,000 Packed Meals are served daily
Preparation of the dough for making puris
Removing the dough from the Mixing Machine
Loading the dough into Roti-making Machine
The two Roti Machines combined can produce about 25,000 rotis per hour
Sevadars making puris by hand
Making puris in the deep fryer
Puris are covered to keep them soft
Making Masala Rice: First the rice is soaked in water
The masala (spices) are added to the boiling water & oil
Rice is added and cooked
The rice needs to be cooled before being packed
The food-grade bags are first opened to facilitate packing
Assembling and packing the puris with pickle
Pathseekers students packing Masala Rice
Students packing Puri meals into containers
Loading trucks with the prepared meals for delivery
The meals are brought to the Dera gate
At the gate the meals are loaded onto government-arranged trucks for distribution.
Radha Soami Satsang Beas, through its Satsang Centres across India, prepare and serve approximately 12 lakh (1.2 million) meals per day to those in need.

Translation of the background shabad Sevak Seva me rahe.
Taken from the Hindi book Santo ki Bani, page 158.

Sevak Seva me rahe
One whose sole concern is selfless service
may be called a devotee;
without devotion to service, says Kabir,
one cannot be considered a true devotee.

One who is truly dedicated to service,
remains unconcerned with anything else
and endures pain and pleasure with equanimity
is a true devotee indeed, explains Kabir.

The true devotee has no mind of his own,
he takes his Master’s words as his canon –
no wiles and stratagems please the Master,
only service rendered with devotion pleases the Master.

He waits patiently at the Master’s door,
abiding rebukes and rebuffs with forbearance;
hoping that one day his Master will shower his grace,
he never leaves his Master’s door.

The Master loves everyone equally, O Kabir,
but no one longs for the Master;
as long as one remains concerned with oneself
one can never be a true devotee.

A true devotee is devoted to his Master
he selflessly serves him day and night;
one whose heart is not truly devoted
will not be able to face his Master.

Without any bindings he remains bound
when bound, he gains freedom from all bonds;
he does his Master’s bidding
yet, does not consider himself the doer
only he is a true devotee.

By whose side stands the mighty Master,
how can such a devotee be in want of anything?
All powers serve such a fortunate one
and liberation becomes his companion.

When the devotee is unhappy so is his Master;
all through the ages this is an established fact:
he appears within an instant
and showers his devotee with untold bliss.

He who serves his Master day and night
and seeks nothing in return for his services;
beyond Kal’s reach is such a devotee, O Kabir,
and Kal cannot cause him any harm.