Community whose temple dream was rejected continues to help hundreds of people during lockdown

During that time, you might have expected them to bear a grudge or feel just a little bitter towards the city that so vehemently rejected them.

But, to a group devoted to Indian spiritual master Shirdi Sai Baba, whose ethos was love, forgiveness, helping others and charity, such a reaction would be abhorrent.

Instead the devotees have demonstrated exactly the opposite to petulance and have continued to work harder than ever to feed the hand that bit them by ensuring hundreds of MK people do not go hungry during the Covid crisis.

They spend their days collecting huge bags of rice, atta (wheat flour), large drums of cooking oil, pasta, long life milk and other non-perishable foodstuffs to community fridges, food banks, langars (community kitchen) and charities so they can provide vast quantities of free food for anybody who needs it, whatever their faith.

Members work for hour after hour in their own kitchens cooking up meals, which they distribute to venues including the YMCA and Cranfield University, where a group of international students were unfortunately stuck and short of money for sustenance during the pandemic.

The community calls itself SHITAL (Shirdi Sai Baba Temple association of London), a name that led to unfortunate abuse from objectors to the temple plan in the heart of Tattenhoe estate.

"We endeavour that within five kilometres of any SHITAL temple and centre, no one goes hungry; as was the practice Sai Baba followed when He was physically present in Shirdi, " said a Shital spokesman.

"Collecting food donations from Shirdi devotees in other towns is part of our remit, too. For example, we moved 25 x 10 kg bags of rice, 40 x 5 kg tins of vegetable oil, 10 x 10 kg bags of atta from Leicester to Milton Keynes not so long ago. This required careful logistics planning..." he said,

When face mask supplies were pitifully scarce at start of the pandemic, "the boys" of the Shital crew, mostly men in their thirties with jobs as IT consultants, lawyers, and architects, jumped into action.

"They went about obtaining masks for distribution to the community at large. They sourced a supplier in India, but bureaucracy meant a delay in air-freighting. Meanwhile, one of the ladies in the Shirdi Group found, through her friends, a seamstress in Shenley Lodge who made masks using certified synthetic fabric, with the necessary pore size," said the spokesman,

"The Shirdi Group commissioned her to produce 750 masks, and with volunteers from the ladies of the Shirdi Group, this figure was reached in no time. The masks were rapidly taken up by care homes and Schools in and around Oxley Park, where most of the Shirdi devotes live," he added.

A consignment of 1000 masks then arrived from India, and there was another round of distribution to grateful recipients.

Worried that mental health was an issue among the hordes of people they were helping, the congregation organised a sponsored ‘Walk for Sai’ around Furzton Lake.

"This raised spirits no end, with all participants being given a goody bag with water, tasty Indian snacks, and a

mask," said the spokesman.

This month members of the 80-strong Shirdi Shital congregation, who meet when Covid rules allow at Westcroft Community Centre, are quietly preparing an appeal against the refusal of permission to build their own temple.

They had applied for consent to build the temple out of recycled shipping container on land at St Agnes Way on Tattenhoe. Architects had drawn up the plan and it was approved in principle by planning officers at Milton Keynes council.

But when the matter came to committee last November, councillors voted to overrule the officers. They had listened to objections from residents worried about potential parking problems caused by large numbers of worshippers. Some said the building would be a blot on the local landscape.