New Delhi: A group of five friends from Punjab’s Amritsar has earned praises for organising a ‘pizza langar’ for the protesting farmers at the Delhi-Haryana border against the contentious agri-marketing laws. As the youths did not have much time to organise for a proper langar, they collected ‘regular-sized’ pizzas from a mall in Haryana and set up a stall at the Singhu border to feed the famers.

During the ‘pizza langar’, over 400 pizzas were distributed within minutes as a huge crowd, including the protesting peasants and residents from nearby areas, queued up immediately. This noble act not of the youths has not only hogged headlines but also garnered a lot of compliments from different quarters, and also brickbats from a certain section.

One of the youths, Shanbir Singh Sandhu said, “The farmers who gave the dough for pizzas can also afford to have one themselves.”

“We didn’t have much time to organise a regular lentils-chapatti langar…. So we came up with this idea,” says Sandhu, who is himself a farmer and an economics student at Guru Nanak Dev University in Amritsar.

Sandhu’s friend, Shahnaz Gill, underscored that people get bored eating the same thing everyday. “We thought we should bring them (farmers) something else to keep their spirits up,” he said.

The 21-year-old student of agriculture says this is first time they have organised a ‘pizza langar’, expressing happiness that people have appreciated their efforts.

However, Sandhu says it is unfortunate and totally unacceptable that some people were ridiculing farmers having pizzas.

“Few people just cannot digest that a farmer can have a car, wear good clothes and have a pizza. The farmer has moved on from dhoti-kurta to jeans and T-shirt,” the 25-year-old student says. “It’s about time these people grew up.”

One of the reasons for organising a ‘pizza langar’ was to change the public perception about farmers, he adds.

Gill says no one has the right to comment on what a farmer should eat or wear.

“People have been calling us ‘so-called farmers’. Before making any such comment, they should come and meet us first, he says. “They will get to know that our thinking is much better than theirs.”

The five friends have decided to organise another such langar, which they say will be better and bigger. It can be pizza or burger or something else, too, Sandhu said.

Earlier, several volunteers and farmers have also bought machines and set up mini-gyms and massage centres to maintain the health of the elderly farmers at the Singhu border. The camp was set up by the Khalsa Aid that gave ‘calf and leg massage machines’ at the site and invited farmers to a 10-minute session each.