Etobicoke Indian food lovers are helping to educate two aspiring young girls across the world through the purchase of a tasty snack.
Karan Kalia, owner of Tich Modern Indian Cuisine, at 2314 Lake Shore Blvd. W., has been putting aside about 25-cents for the Indian teens from the sale of every tasty Onion Bhaji appetizer, which are a favourite of many customers.
Kalia says the change works out to a princely sum when converted into Indian rupees.
She says the funds help sisters Jyoti, 17, and Anjali, 15, who live a difficult life in New Delhi.
The pair help their mom, who works as an ironing lady, or “press wali,” for their village. They daily help to pick up the clothing, with the ironing and then return the items to their customers.
Most villages in India have a “press wali,” who acts as the local ironing lady.
“Jyoti is passionate about dance and hopes to pursue a career within the field,” she says. “Anjali is inclined towards finance and wishes to work in the banking industry.”
Her daughter Shanaya, 19, befriended the girls while on a trip to India and vowed to help them with their education.
“My daughter was surprised to see them studying under a lamp-post in New Delhi at night,” Kalia recalls. “They started a friendship and she wanted to help them.”
She says many customers order the appetizers once they learn that part of the price goes to help the girls with their education.
“Every couple months we exchange into rupees the money we have collected and send it to them,” Kalia says. “It may not sound as much but it is a fair bit after we convert it to rupees.”
She estimate they’ve sent more than 5,000 rupees to help the girls, which is more than $100 Canadian.
“It is a small gesture but it is a start in giving back to the community,” Kalia says. “Thanks to our customers here who are helping these girls in India.”
Tich restaurant just celebrated its fifth anniversary and has customers from across the city who love their good Indian cuisine.

Column April 5.18

It will be 50-years this week that U.S. civil rights leader Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was killed by a sniper while standing on a balcony outside his room at the infamous Lorraine Motel in Memphis.

The shooter, James Earl Ray, fled to Toronto and hid out for several weeks in west-end rooming houses as he obtained new travel documents.

King Jr., was outside Room 306 speaking to colleagues as Ray lined-up his rifle and fired a fatal shot from the bathroom of an adjacent rooming house that overlooked the Lorraine.

It was just after 6:05 p.m. on April 4, 1968 when the father and civil rights icon was struck in the lower right side of his face by the assassin’s bullet. He collapsed to the floor and was cradled by friend Ralph Abernathy, as closest aide Jesse Jackson called for help.

The death threats against King Jr., and his entourage, had been mounting as he spoke at Southern rallies to help down-trodden Blacks. The man, who once had a dream, was rushed to St. Joseph’s Hospital, where he was pronounced dead about an hour later. He was 39.

King Jr. had dismissed another threat against him as he travelled to Memphis to prepare for a march on behalf of striking Memphis sanitation workers, who were seeking the same pay as whites.

News of his death spread like wildfire across the U.S., angering both Blacks and whites, who took to streets in more than 100 cities. More than 40 people were killed during the riots, robberies and the looting and burning of businesses.

President Lyndon B. Johnson called for a national day of mourning on April 7, which led to the closure of public libraries, museums, schools and businesses.

The next day King’s widow, Coretta Scott King, and other family members joined thousands of participants in a march in Memphis honoring King Jr. and supporting the sanitation workers.

His funeral service at Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church was attended by many of the nation’s political and civil rights leaders.

More than 100,000 mourners followed two mules pulling King Jr.’s coffin through the solemn streets. His body was interred in a crypt at the King Center, an institution founded by Coretta.

Shortly after the assassination, a policeman discovered a bundle containing a Remington rifle next door to the boarding house, which led to the FBI launching one of its largest international investigations in history.

Fingerprints lifted from the rifle led to Ray, a small-time hood who had escaped from a Missouri prison in April 1967, where he was serving 20-years for armed robbery.

Ray later admitted that he fled the murder scene to Atlanta, where he boarded a Greyhound bus for Detroit. Using an alias, he hopped in a cab across the border to Windsor, where he caught a train for Toronto’s Union Station.

“I got to Toronto pretty late in the day (on April 6). Then I started walking and trying to find a room and I walked quite a while until I found this Ossington St. address,” Ray told the Toronto Star in a 1993 jailhouse interview.

Ray said he hid at two west-end rooming houses as he obtained new documents to travel to Europe and then Africa to “earn a living as a mercenary.”

“I was just trying to get a passport and probably I think I’d have an easier time getting a passport in Toronto than Montreal (because) it’s English speaking and all of that,” he told the Star’s Robert Benzie.

On May 6, just over a month after the death of King Jr., Ray bought a ticket to London from a Bloor St. W. travel agency. He was nabbed at Heathrow Airport on June 8 trying to fly to Belgium.

He later confessed to the crime and was sentenced to a 99-year prison term. He died in 1998 after recanting his guilty plea and claiming to be framed by political forces. There are still those today who believe King Jr. was killed by the mafia or U.S. police.
– 30 –