I think the best thing that Gujarat has to show for except for Mr., Gandhi and Sardar and all those great freedom fighters is its long list of festivals. Really if you consider yourself a Machiavelli or even a Type A personality or a workaholic, I think its best you stay away from Gujarat. Because it has so many festivals which people crazily follow, you are bound to stall at one festival or another.
It all starts with the month of August (correct me if I am wrong, but I am starting according to the EPL calendar). This is the month of fasting or Shravan mahino, as people fondly call it. In this month people enjoy abstaining from food for I think around ten days. Now why did I write enjoy from abstinence. The thing is that you cannot eat normal food, but you can eat farall, a kind of food which is so delicately categorized for eating, it is so delicious and fulfilling that even during the days of fasting you are bound to eat like hell. The food included under this includes faralli chevdo, faralli wafer, faralli samosa, farrali burger, faralli this and faralli that and all the junk food that you could imagine of. Really at the end of this month people actually gain weight instead of losing it. In fact I had one of my friends asking whether PEPSI or even a Coke be categorized under faralli. I said damn man! , The only thing that could be left here would be faralli non-veg.
A common man with simple economics knowledge could ascertain that during fasts the sales of eateries should go down as demand is equal to supply. But you need economists like Friedman to really calculate the demand-supply curve existing here. In this case the eatables sales actually receive a boost instead of a declining curve. We can name it anything supply shock, Nash equilibrium or faralli tendency. But the fact remains that Shravan is one hell of enjoyment from abstinence.
