Look out for those you care about, in more ways than on

Ashutosh Shirke, 40, loves cricket and loves helping people out even more. He describes how his “North Stand Gang” has helped out people in Mumbai whenever they needed it.

“We are a motley crew who are always the loudest in the North Stand of Wankhede Stadium during any cricket match in Mumbai - be it Tests, which is our favourite, ODIs or T20s. It doesn’t matter if it is the Indian cricket team in action, the Mumbai Indians playing the Indian Premier League or a Ranji Trophy fixture in progress - cricket runs through our blood. What we love about this particular stand is the fact that it is the most passionate during any of the games.

Back in the day, cellphones were not allowed in the stadium, so while we had a great time during the match, there was little interaction after it. In 2009, we were first allowed to carry them inside and we exchanged numbers. Soon, we would meet up after the game and unite on weekends to simply hang out. Our core group is about 20, but with every match, we had more likeminded folks joining in between the ages of 21 and 46. In fact, our youngest member is just eight and joins his father at a few of the matches.

In 2012, we started our twitter handle, @NorthStandGang, where we would tweet about the matches that we were going to. Soon, we got a lot of traction on it due to the cricket, a few even believing that we could fetch them tickets for a game!

While a few of our members have moved abroad for studies or work, most of us are still based out of Mumbai. We know how difficult it can get if you’re stuck in the rains in this city and decided to use our twitter following to good effect in the monsoon.

While in the past we’ve tweeted about people who are missing or pets that had strayed, we decided to use the medium to help out in the rains as well. Our members are spread across Mumbai in places like Marine Drive, Dadar, Kandivali, Borivali and Thane, so we decided to send out messages to people who were stranded and decided to help them out in whatever way that we could. If they were in the area, we would simply ask them to come over and get out of the rain; in case they were not around, we would try to locate someone close to them.

These actions have been backed by a simple philosophy – one should always look out for those they care about. Another way of doing that is by getting your life insured. I wasn’t very familiar with the world of insurance and investments, but my elder brother made me realise how important it is when he bought an HDFC Life policy a few years ago.”

Like Ashutosh, more and more people are realising how essential it is to get your loved ones protected through a term insurance policy.

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ARN: ED/08/19/15325