Starting in the last week of March 2020, when the country went into lockdown, Ruben Mascarenhas with a group of volunteers began to distribute food to people, mostly migrant workers on their way back home, along Mumbai’s Western Express Highway. Most were migrant workers on, what became, their days-long trek back home. Through their NGO, Khana Chahiye, the volunteers relentlessly providing food to the needy, despite the challenges of the pandemic.
Ruben is one of the four ‘heroes’ in the feature-length documentary Lords of Lockdown, directed by Mihir Fadnavis and produced by Anurag Kashyap and Navin Shetty. The documentary, which captures the immediate aftermath of the pandemic when the world came to a standstill, had its premiere at the New York Indian Film Festival in May 2021.
