Richa Chadha starts social media initiative ‘The Kindry’
In the past year, stories of death, devastation, lack of availability of medical help, poverty and unemployment have dominated the news cycle, rightly so. At a time like this, we must be informed and face the realities as a country. But every cloud has a silver lining. And in this case, it is the people of India, many of whom have come together against all odds to help each other.
Richa Chadha, known equally for her interest in social issues, has started a new community based initiative called ‘The KINDry’, which quite simply put, aims to celebrate ordinary people doing extraordinary things. It is only a social media initiative right now. When news of a thief returning the medicines he’d stolen with a simple note that read ‘sorry i didn’t know these are Corona medicines’ went viral last month, Chadha was inspired to come up with this initiative with the help of her co-founder and designer, Krishan Jagota who is also the community head at Fluid.
Speaking on the same, the actress said, “I was moved that a person, who’d stolen something in desperation had so much heart and integrity that they returned it. I don’t want to tell people to ‘be positive’ and ignore the painful reality of pain, trauma and loss. That is nothing but toxic positivity. At the same time, The KINDry will not be about fluffy pink clouds and unicorns, but incidents actually happening around us which don’t get amplified as much as they ought to. People also deserve to hear stories of real life heroes. We will start small and we hope to build a community, or strengthen existing ones. The idea is to celebrate unsung heroes who you read about only in passing. While responding to SOS appeals on social media, I realized ordinary citizens are working day and night to procure life-saving drugs, beds, oxygen for people they’ve never met. We have seen a truly bipartisan effort, where temporarily people have forgotten even their ideological differences and come through to help each other. This gives me hope and I want to share these hopeful stories which are rooted in reality. We must deliberately amplify the good, to ease the pain of real news. It is clear that what will see us through this phase, is the kindness of strangers.”
