KARACHI: The St Anthony’s Annual Fundraiser, a fellowship for a cause, saw the St Anthony’s Church compound, on Sunday, lined with some 60 to 70 stalls offering food, including local, Goan and Filipino delicacies, handicraft, clothes, imitation jewellery, books and lots of games and lucky draws to keep everyone happy and engaged.

There were also samosa, chaat, sherbets, smoothies, juices, ice cream and gola ganda.

According to Father Arthur Charles, the parish priest, “The annual fundraiser is held to generate funds for education, health, the underprivileged and downtrodden of the Catholic community.”

The fundraiser, which kicked off at 10:30am was also wrapped up by 3pm. “We are selling at normal prices at the moment but as the time to wrap up gets close we will start dropping our prices. We will sell at wholesale rates,” said Mr Benny, a jovial good natured community volunteer who was selling cakes at the ‘Masala Dosa’ stall.

The stall offered plenty of things such as cookies, pickles, chutney sandwiches and bun kabab with masala dosa as their biggest seller. The stall had a spacious kitchen and store behind it where Melba and Jovita were making fresh and crisp dosa one after the other to fulfil the demand at the front counter.

Beautician Angie Marshall said that other than the things on offer at the stalls she was happy to see the huge number of people turning up despite the heat.

“These kinds of gatherings, besides fulfilling a good cause, are also good opportunities to meet each other,” she said, adding that she particularly enjoyed the gola ganda.

“I had it first because of the heat but now I am not sure if I should go for the biryani or masala dosa next,” she laughed.

The chief guest on the occasion David Kenney, from Kenneyz Group, and his better half Agnes Kenney, meanwhile, felt quite full by just sampling everything from every stall. It also happened to be Mr Kenney’s birthday and all the stalls joined in to wish him a very happy birthday. So on top of everything else, he also got to have several cakes!

Published in Dawn, July 8th, 2024