On  an early Sunday morning (the morning of 23rd May 2010), when every sensible human being is supposed to be snuggled in bed and fast sleep, many industrious souls of Bangalore gathered with uncontained excitement for an event that took the metropolitan by storm. The City’s reputed Sunfeast World 10K Marathon kicked off this year with even more gusto than was anticipated. The only one of its kind in Bangalore, this year the marathon had over 18 000 participants who ran in the event.

Starting from the famed Canteerva stadium and winding through the most beautiful streets of the city, the race was a traffic-stopping thrill that left many Bangloreans wishing for more.

The Akshaya Patra Foundation also took part in the race. We made up some of those industrious souls,  running through the Indian summer in our Aksahay Patra T-shirts, waving our banners with merry determination and unfailing team spirit.

“Food for Education!!” we cheered.

While most of the team took part in the 5.7 km ‘Majja’ Run however, one brave member of our staff, Saumya, ran the ‘Open 10K’ race. Inspired by the strength of the people around him, he completed the entire 10 km.

“There was one point when it was really difficult to continue, I thought I would give up. But you know what happened? A total stranger came up to me and said ‘keep running, don’t give up on the cause’. After I heard that, I couldn’t stop. He overtook me, that’s another thing…”

‘Keep running, don’t give up on the cause’

With such simple words the stranger captured the sprit of our donors and well-wishers. They have supported us through our most difficult times and encouraged us to keep running. We dedicate this article to all the thousands of people who have stood by us through the years.

It is YOUR hard work and strength that has helped 1.2 million children across India. It is YOU who have made us what we are today. And for that, we thank you.

One of the many salient features of the world’s largest kitchen includes the system to clean raw rice. This rice-cleaning machine was imported from Spain in the year 2005. The arrangement, with a capacity of cleaning up to 5 tons of rice in an hour, can be divided into three sections. The first section segregates metal adulterants such as nails, iron fillings etc; the second, a larger structure, segregates dust, moth, chaff, husk and broken rice grains while the third separates stones from the rice.

The rice supplied is fed manually into the system through a meshed inlet. From here it enters the first section of the arrangement, where rice grains flow around magnetic rollers that attract all ferrous particles present. There are seven such rollers which segregate impurities such as nails, screws, iron filings, steel chips, pins etc. The rice from here is lifted to an elevated level through bucket conveyors and is fed into the second section of the system.

Here, rice is loaded on vibrating trays to separate moth, chaff, husk and broken rice, a mechanism which took more than 5 months to be installed. The grains travel through different trays which segregate each impurity separately. These impurities are collected at the corresponding outlets. In this entire process, dust from the rice also gets segregated and is collected in the dust collector while the rice itself comes to the rice collector. From here, it is taken to the next phase of operations.

The rice de-stoner removes the presence of stones from raw rice. Imported from Japan, it forms the last stage of the rice cleaning process.

The cleaned rice is then lifted by bucket conveyors to be stored in the 160 metric tons silo.