“For all those who talk about publicity, come here, get your hands dirty. Sleep four hours every night, walk around in the daily sun, run around in this fear of epidemics, come and do it, put your life at risk here. Then we’ll talk.” [CSM]

According to the Christian Science Monitor, Bollywood pretty boy Vivek Oberoi has left Bombay for Devanampattinam where he is taking a hands on approach to Tsunami relief. Instead of simply writing a check, or sending relief supplies south, he’s in the effected area, going house to house, handing out supplies.

Oberoi and his volunteer recruits have built about 100 huts to shelter homeless families, their blue and green plastic roofs setting them apart from the thatched huts that survived the tsunami. They have also set up six communal kitchens, handing out food to the needy. When Oberoi learned of the destruction that the tsunami had wrought, he assembled a six-truck convoy of relief supplies and drove south. At Devanampattinam, he was told, more than 1,000 families had been struck by the disaster. He was appalled at the way food packets were being tossed from the backs of trucks into scrambling crowds, he recalls. “People were saying, ‘we’ve lost our homes, we’ve lost everything. Now don’t take away our dignity.’ I decided that, all right, we’ll distribute to every individual home.” Initially, he couldn’t find people to distribute the supplies in Devanampattinam because everyone was scared of disease. “So I picked up one [relief supply] box, put it on my shoulder, and I went to one house,” he says. “I gave them the supplies. I picked up the other box, I walked in farther, and I gave the next box. Then the third box, went in farther….”

A publicity stunt? He says not, pointing out that none of the locals knew who he was since they watched mainly Tamil films, not Hindi ones. And to some extent, who cares. Most of the aid seems to have been about making the givers happier rather than seeing what the recipients wanted most (I have a whole blog post about this in my head). Unlike some of post tsunami donors, he’s at least making sure that his supplies reach the affected populace, and is sticking around long enough to make sure what he’s doing is of some use. As long as his efforts are helping people and not crowding out more appropriate efforts, then I’ll give him credit. Carrying supplies is a better use of those gym built muscles than simply preening on screen.