Spir­i­tu­al leader Sad­hgu­ru has 8.5 mil­lion fol­low­ers on In­sta­gram, 5.2 mil­lion fans on Face­book and 3.9 mil­lion fol­low­ers on Twit­ter.

But even a glob­al su­per­star can have a fan­boy mo­ment. It hap­pened for the yo­gi when he met dou­ble-world record hold­er Bri­an Lara yes­ter­day.

On Mon­day the Founder of the Isha Foun­da­tion ar­rived in the coun­try for An Evening With Sad­hgu­ru fea­tur­ing Machel Mon­tano which will be held to­day.

Sit­ting on the first-floor bal­cony of the Hy­att Re­gency, with the still wa­ters of the Gulf of Paria in the back­ground, the best­selling au­thor re­count­ed his en­counter with the Prince of Port-of-Spain.

“It was a fan mo­ment for me to meet Bri­an Lara and play golf with him, I don’t think Bri­an would want me to share the rid­dles of the game so I will leave it with him,” Sad­hgu­ru chuck­led.

Sad­hgu­ru has been an in­flu­en­tial voice at ma­jor glob­al fo­rums in­clud­ing the Unit­ed Na­tions and World Eco­nom­ic Fo­rum ad­dress­ing is­sues such as so­cioe­co­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment, lead­er­ship and spir­i­tu­al­i­ty.

He launched the glob­al move­ment Save Soil, to ad­dress the soil cri­sis by bring­ing to­geth­er peo­ple from around the world to stand up for Soil Health, and sup­port­ing lead­ers of all na­tions to in­sti­tute na­tion­al poli­cies and ac­tions to­ward in­creas­ing the or­gan­ic con­tent in cul­tivable Soil.

“I did a hun­dred-day ride from Lon­don to In­dia and by June 23 the met­rics were show­ing that we have touched 3.91 bil­lion peo­ple,” he said.

“The nar­ra­tive on the plan­et has def­i­nite­ly changed since then, many laws have been en­act­ed in var­i­ous na­tions, bud­gets have been lo­cat­ed in many na­tions.

“My vis­it to Trinidad is very im­por­tant be­cause the Save Soil Move­ment, the first leg, start­ed here and the Cari­com na­tions signed MOUs.”

He went on to speak about the im­por­tance of the Move­ment at­tribut­ing it to the de­cline of the life of top­soil in the world.

Ac­cord­ing to the UN’s Food and Agri­cul­ture Or­gan­i­sa­tion, the world grows 95 per cent of its food in the up­per­most lay­er of soil, mak­ing top­soil one of the most im­por­tant com­po­nents of the food sys­tem.

But be­cause of con­ven­tion­al farm­ing prac­tices, near­ly half of the most pro­duc­tive soil has dis­ap­peared in the world in the last 150 years, threat­en­ing crop yields and con­tribut­ing to nu­tri­ent pol­lu­tion, dead zones and ero­sion.

“If we al­low this to hap­pen for an­oth­er 35 to 30 years time we will be in a se­ri­ous dis­as­ter across the plan­et,” he said.

“The sim­ple thing is to make poli­cies so that the re­ver­sal will be­gin to hap­pen.”

While in T&T Sad­hgu­ru is sched­uled to meet with var­i­ous Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ters and or­gan­i­sa­tions.

An Evening With Sad­hgu­ru fea­tur­ing Machel Mon­tano, which is be­ing pre­sent­ed by Guardian Me­dia Lim­it­ed, is set to take place at the Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence in Ma­coya from 8 pm this evening. Gates open at 6 pm.

“Guardian Me­dia Lim­it­ed is ex­cit­ed to part­ner with this event giv­en the glob­al mag­ni­tude of the cause,” said GML’s Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor Dr Kar­ri­an Hep­burn Mal­colm.

“We are de­light­ed to host Sad­hgu­ru who chose Trinidad as one of the coun­tries on his world­wide tour to raise aware­ness about the Save Soil Move­ment, in part­ner­ship with our icon­ic so­ca star Machel Mon­tano who we have per­son­al­ly wit­nessed the evo­lu­tion of.”

Pa­trons can look for­ward to an acoustic set with the King of So­ca, Marge Black­man and Dru­patee fol­lowed by a pre­sen­ta­tion from the Isha Foun­da­tion and fol­lowed by a pre­sen­ta­tion by Sad­hgu­ru him­self.

The ful­ly booked event will be streamed Live on CNC3 web­site www.cnc3.co.tt, as well as CNC3 so­cial me­dia plat­forms.