“We seek outside the wonders we carry inside us” – Rumi

Dear Climate Healer,

We flew out of Auroville to Bengaluru on a red alert day for SpiceJet, which meant that security was extra tight at the airport. They insisted that Akhil couldn’t take his crystals in his hand luggage, just in case he decides to break the windows on the plane with those rocks. To accommodate security, we had to check in Vega the Cow with the crystals and therefore, incurred a Rs. 6,000 fee for excess baggage.

Our first event in Bengaluru at the Swami Vivekananda Holistic Research Center was a delight and it involved speaking to young students who were reciting chapters of the Bhagavad Gita. One of the parents later sent us some feedback,
“After listening to the importance of becoming vegan in the morning, we were served lunch which had curd and it was a little disheartening. So it would be nice if you could give a sample of how a vegan meal would look like in your events. Maybe a meal with only vegan food could be served.”

Good idea, indeed. Though we had left the event before lunch, we passed this feedback onto the organizers and resolved that we would never attend an event again in the future where such cognitive dissonance would be present.

In the evening, we screened The Land Of Ahimsa at Lahe Lahe to a packed and appreciative audience, followed by a delectable whole foods plant based healthy vegan dinner catered by Sampoorna Ahara. We are eternally grateful to the Bengaluru team, especially Dr. Achyuthan Eswar and his colleagues at Sampoorna Ahara, for their incredible hospitality during our stay there. We left Bengaluru with lots of healthy Vegan snacks, which were actually tastier and made us feel better than the standard commercial fare.

Next, in Hyderabad, we were hosted by the Indian School of Business (ISB), the number one rated business school in India. We stayed at the Executive Housing facilities on the ISB campus, where roads sport signs saying
“Caution: Peacock Crossing”
While the talk and screening were attended by about 50 students, faculty and visitors, the transformations that occurred were profound.

Nagesh Battula, the co-founder of Organo, the number one sustainable community developer in India, was at the screening in ISB and his team hosted us the next day at their Organo Naandi community, 20 Kms from the ISB campus. After a sumptuous Indian Vegan breakfast at the largest open air bamboo structure in India, we toured the beautiful reforested campus which now has over 70 bird species on 23 acres of land, with its own microclimate. This land was barren just a dozen years ago.

We asked Nagesh to check out Cowspiracy on Netflix in order to understand why a Goshala with 70 cows to produce the milk for the Organo Naandi community was fundamentally unsustainable. The next day he posted on LinkedIn that after watching Cowspiracy and checking the facts, he was feeling compelled to drop animal products if he really cared for the planet.

Before leaving Hyderabad, we had dinner with local Vegan activists at the two most iconic Vegan restaurants in Hyderabad, Plantarium and Terrasen. Their menus illustrate the tremendous creativity that Vegan chefs bring to world cuisine as we set about making this global transformation to a Vegan World inevitable.

With much love,
Sailesh on behalf of Akhil, Dolly, Pareen, Vega Cow & Climate Healer and the Climate Healers team.