Somewhere, in a rural corner unhinged from the privileged hubbub of Bangalore, India, a school sits. It is a dirty school. It is a place where spittle and teachers’ ineptitude stain the walls. Where girls learn from the textbooks they were never given, where dropping out is the only way many can cope with the costs of an education.

Out of the eight absent children you already pity one stays home at another’s house, scrubbing dishes and sweeping floors. And another at a factory where the toil of rolling cigarettes infests in young lungs and every breath taken, a peril to be feared.

A boy and a girl sit within those very walls. The school is decrepit and they are gleeful, no matter the dirt that maligns their desks. Because somewhere across the seas, 9284 miles away, a branch of the non-profit Indian organization Akshaya Patra works to change their world.

On Oct. 24, the Dallas chapter chimed open the annual banquet that raises thousands of dollars to feed impoverished children in India. Coppell High School senior Surabi Rao, President of the Dallas Youth Chapter, spoke about the organization’s work.

“Fifteen dollars can feed a child for an entire year,” Rao said. “So if you start thinking about it, in terms of how many kids you’re feeding, it’s pretty cool.”

The banquet is the one event where both the Youth chapter and the main Dallas chapter are present for a night of giving, sharing, dancing, eating and celebrating all those who can now too.

The gala began with a reception, in a foyer before the dining hall at the Dallas Marriott Hotel, where Indians, Americans and special guests including Tulsi Gabbard gathered.

The commended Hawaiian war veteran and first Hindu member of the U.S. Congress was not at all out of place in this charitable congregation- earlier this year; in fact,Gabbard had embarked to India herself, where she did more than meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi- she visited several orphanages, and even an Akshaya Patra kitchen.

“I think it’s a tremendous vision, that Akshaya Patra is pursuing to change the lives of so many children through the simple act of providing school lunches to the children, so they can become educated,” Gabbard said.

“Aloha,” Gabbard later initiated the program. But she was doing much more than saying “hello.”

As Gabbard explained, “[Aloha] has to do with respect, it has to do with greeting each other sincerely, with love, with an open heart, with care, and with compassion recognizing that each of us, no matter where we come from…each of us stand on equal ground… as though we are part of one family, and to me that is what Akshaya Patra’s mission is about.”

Guests of Honor, Satish and Yasmin Gupta, philanthropists and donors of the College of Business at the University of Dallas, shared the story that for struggling immigrants is the American fantasy: the couple started a business that, today, is a multibillion dollar company. And their company, SB International, gives just as much as it earns.

In an entwining vine of opera and piano, a pianist and opera singer pull the members and guests back to the cause and remind them why they’re here- because of the love that unspools miles and miles to the underprivileged schools not many have visited, but all, in this moment, breathe for. The children and Akshaya Patra USA are a distance apart and a heartbeat close.

Meghna Prakash, a member of the North Dallas Youth Chapter, introduced the theme of the night, ‘hope’, as inspired by the painting, the Wrath of the Medusa. And the CEO of Akshaya Patra USA steps on stage. Her name is Emily Rosenbaum and she is wearing a sari, a traditional Indian dress. The lights dim, and hope, indeed, takes their place.

What becomes one of the most touching moments of the night is the haloed darkness that Rosenbaum shares with the crowd, in memory and thought of the lives she and the organization have changed and were changing at that very moment.

“How many of you go back and forth to India every year?” Rosenbaum asked the audience.

She urged them to go visit a real Akshaya Patra kitchen, to witness the real miracles that bloom every day at lunchtime, for real, beating hearts, just as she first saw in 2011.

Because, the boy and girl who wait for food? Somewhere, not too far, chutes swallow daal and cauldrons churn 1,200 liters of sambhar apiece. 60,000 chapattis are borne of metal and every little grain stitched together by the Akshaya Patra kitchens is delivered to over 1.4 million children, driven by a hunger that is halted across 10 states of the country, in 24 locations.

Rosenbaum shows the video of an Indian girl, Kajal, who is one of the 1,429,878 – and growing – children who are fed by Akshaya Patra.

The young girl speaks in Hindi, saying, “My father said to me before that I couldn’t study, I just had to stay at home and work. But when the neighbors started saying that there was a mid-day meal in the school, my father told me to go to school because at least now I could get food once.”

Yet Rosenbaum reminds the impassioned crowd that their work is not over, even with the 1.4 million children they are already feeding.

“We can’t stop,” Rosenbaum said. “Our goal is to get to that 5 million mark..there’s something magical about that mark because it’s like a tipping point.”

And they are not stopping. The Youth exemplifies their power as the young to further this goal, with Surabi’s speech rippling every syllable through the noble cause and the Dallas Youth Chapter’s self-made videos galvanizing even the adults.

The peak of the gala begins: the pledge-drive. All the attendees encircling the tables are asked to pledge themselves to severing the only impediment that is left between eager Indian children and education:hunger. After the donations are collected, the members announce that over a tremendous $305,000 has been raised. A staggering amount to the 365 days of 20,333 impoverished children just these few hours will feed.

After giving so much, it is time to be fed themselves: the crowd breaks and heads to the vegetarian Indian buffet laid outside of the hall.

“It’s made a really big difference, just knowing that making one or two dollars can help a bunch of kids,” Dallas Youth member Dilan Samarasuriya said. “I mean, you can go to Starbucks and get coffee for ten dollars but you can use that ten bucks to feed kids in India who need it.”

The youth soon leave to enjoy the dance floor- where they jam it out to India and America, Honey Singh’s Sunny Sunny and Drake’s Hotline Bling. And the little boy and girl so far away, they smile, because they are so close. To a present where their textbooks roar to the next page, and the world to a next quenched dream. It doesn’t matter that right now, they breathe in dust from lessons left unlearnt in hunger. Because the wheels of a truck outside murmur a hope into them. Food has arrived. And things, they are getting better.