The Action Research Fellows and Associates of the Centre for Development Practice (www.cdp.res.in) are setting up a pop up kitchen in front of the library block tomorrow to put to display local food cultures from Jharkhand, Odisha and Chattisgarh (the food on display tomorrow has been cooked from food grains and vegetables grown in these three states with indigenous seeds and indigenous know-how; no fertilizers or pesticides have been used). The effort is born out of a response to the process of the gradual loss of difference in the food culture. The attempt, in this pop up kitchen, is also to usher in a relationship between the producer and the consumer; one, to bring the consumer and producer closer to each other by informing the former about the latter and the processes the latter deploys; two, to carry the diverse menu of rural local food to the urban globalised dining culture. This pop up kitchen also aims to bring recipes from the (rural) producer’s world to AUD so as to represent, in however limited a form, the hidden diversity of food cultures in our country such that it not only reduces the producer-consumer gap but also pays attention towards how our food habits are increasingly becoming inclined towards the “polished” (‘white rice’ for example) than what is “nutritional”. However, the whole effort is not limited to the pursuit of knowing about local food cultures but about an experience of cooking such food and getting a taste of the diverse food cultures of rural central India. We invite you to visit our pop up kitchen unit tomorrow between 12 noon and 2 pm in front of the Library Block; a rather diverse menu from Jharkhand, Odisha and Chattisgarh shall be on display for all of us as perhaps a welcome break.