Sattvik

This past weekend I visited the 8th Annual Sattvik Food Festival, held at IIM-Ahmedabad. The event is the brainchild of Prof. Anil Gupta, the visionary founder of SRISTI.

There was delicious food, interesting art, and the grassroots innovations of rural people on display. I had two highlights for the day. One was having Guptaji glide past me through the festival, with entourage in tow. Whenever I see Guptaji, he always has a group of cronies following him around who he leads around like a tour guide while throwing out occasional wise words and deep observations. There's always a funny contrast between his khadi-clad loose charismatic presence and the stiff FOBs with nerdy clothes and glasses with hands behind the back, trailing behind him. The other highlight was visiting Samadbhai, an incredible organic farmer, who had a stall at the festival where he was selling his organic peanuts, peanut oil, grains, etc. At his stall, I bought a bag of roasted salted peanuts, and left some extra behind to pay forward a bag for the next patron. Samadbhai's daughters, who were manning the stall at the time, were confused, and after stumbling through an explanation in Gujarati, amused.

More images from the day below: