Animal or vegetable

Recently been reading an article on how the food items we consume at public places like restaurants are contaminated with such and such items that are not only harmful to our health, but also detrimental in the long run. In the article, the author mentioned the word ‘dead body eaters’ which denoted non-veg eaters, pun intended or not as the case maybe. The same sort of mentality is also found among non-vegetarians, who don’t shy away from calling vegetarians as ‘grass eaters’. The reason is simple; in some way we are trying to be acceptable, trying to portray we are better.

Why should you be critical of what I chose to eat, as long as it is not harming you or any other person in particular? If non-vegetarians are dead body eaters, every vegetarian diet is not complete without milk and milk products, and everyone knows it is an animal product too, taken from the animal while it is still alive, painfully. You want to know about the pain? Read Maneka Gandhi’s books on why cow’s milk is to be done away with. Also, there is an increasing number of people that would vouch for an egg being a vegetarian item. My question to these, you want to eat eggs? Go ahead, why create such absurd ideas just for acceptance?  It is just either including animal produce or avoiding the same in your diet.

I have stopped eating meat and eggs ever since I conceived. People interpret it from their perspective and propagate too. I have my own reasons which are not spiritual or religious but purely personal. Need to mention here that I had conceived after seven years of marriage, and constantly advised by many vegetarian friends that it was due to me being a non-vegetarian, and I never changed my diet till I conceived. The striking thing was the proponents of the theory had an infertile couple in their own families whom I knew very well of. Well, if I had not answered them back on that, it was purely because I felt sorry for their ignorance and cultured enough not to laugh loudly at their insane idea.

The moment I disclose that I don’t eat meat and eggs, many people ask if I belong to such and such a caste. Where a person says they avoid such items on such and such days, people take it with no questions asked, saying you stopped eating such and such items forever sparks a thousand questions. A friend went on to another level of commenting, ‘Despite not eating meat and eggs, you can never belong to my caste while despite me eating meat and eggs, I shall never be considered an outcaste’. I knew it was rude and tried to answer it in the most composed way like, ‘I don’t think I am foolish enough to even want to belong to your caste’.

Some friends ask me about the eating habits of my kids. Well, I was brought up in such a household, I cook for them, though I don’t taste it, need to mention here, cooking for more than 15 years, not every dish has to be tasted for salt. If I have my doubts, my husband and kids are there to help, after all it is for their taste buds that I cook, and let me put it here, I revere the food I prepare for them more than the food I prepare during religious functions.

Some friends blatantly say, ‘good you have become a vegetarian, make your kids vegetarians too’, which irritates me a lot, why would I make a decision for my kids in such a simple thing as eating? Well, healthy eating is one thing, which I definitely would imbibe in my kids, no binge eating too, but why would I be choosing his menu? If I had the liberty to stop eating meat, doesn't my son have an equal right to decide on eating meat or otherwise?

Parents like me take so much pain to not offend or discomfort peers in school by packing only vegetarian food. I think we should also instill tolerance in our kids, if we happen to belong to pure vegetarian eating group, that showing disgust at other’s food and typecasting people on that basis simply proves that we have not yet grown up as humans. Let’s remember, a human when called an animal is despised no matter but being called a vegetable is even worse.

Blazing desire

As we both delve deep
into each other's eyes
for what feels like an eternity
to people around us,
our lips gushing with
smiles over how
you narrowed and I
expanded into a We,
our hearts whelming with
joy over how
our pasts collided
and futures merged,
Time's definition wanes
demarcation fades
as we stray like little kids
into fields of our past
 and future randomly
like in a maze.

Our egos ignite,
burning themselves
thereby raising
our thoughts to a
single lonely cloud
pregnant with flames
of our blazing desire,
annihilating our fears,
doubts and differences.

One not so fine morning...

There are some days, when waking up I find eyelids heavy, the region above the eyebrows constricting with a slight dull ache, that feels more like I am just imagining. A slight pain in the throat, that feels more like mounds of emotions arrested right there, neither going down, nor out. And the thinker starts thinking.

What could it be, anything wrong? Is it something residual from the previous day. And the previous day enacts in the mind. Sometimes the previous day does have some silly incident, many times it does not. Well, I try to distract the voice throwing too many questions in my mind with some song, and what song do I choose? That most pathetic song, that always brings out sweet bitter memories, and so the mind starts delving deeper into those memories, with questions thrown judiciously, on why the hell did I behave the way I did.

Shouldn't I have been more sensible, more intelligent. How could I be so stupid and easy going? How life would have changed had I behaved differently... Or may be not, Life might have still been worse than now.  All the while the song goes on and on, and gets struck somewhere. What were the lines actually... And I try repeating the previous lines, and wonder is it this word or that. How could I have forgotten the lyrics so easily. Does it mean the song doesn’t hold anything more to it now... Or am I forgetting things?

No... Wait.. I can't be forgetting, I used to have such good memory. Ask me anyone's birthday or anniversary and I would give the entire family's. Isn't it serious then, that I forgot a few words from my favorite song? Is it age? Am I getting old? God, I know I am growing old day after day, but not like this. So soon I forget things at 40. But then, it is almost two-thirds of an average normal person's life. I have lived 40 years... Have I? And so soon I have turned forgetful, yes I remember, I kept searching for my specs, all the while wearing it, my son did point that out. The other day I kept searching for the locker keys that I had placed somewhere securely.

Well, need to accept the fact that nowadays I have started noting down simplest of things to be remembered, only sad part being I forget where I noted them down. Oh come on, I am just 40. I have such young kids. Oh God, what would they do if I leave them at such an early age. And as I try doing all these chores thinking, questioning, replying and worrying, Dad asks me, "Are you on leave today?". I say, "Why would I? I have already taken my sick and casual leaves, what is left for me?" and then alarmingly turn towards the clock to find I hardly have 10 minutes to leave home.

Was it a crappy day... Or did I make it one?

A for ....?

Writing about Indian authors is not only incomplete, but lacks a good start, if not started with Arvind Adiga. The white Tiger was one of the loveliest reading experience I ever had. Right from the first word what ensued was a bold and frank no-nonsense fiction that was very real though dark. I have read several reviews that criticized the work as being too much of India bashing, to just reap the Booker. My humble opinion is that it was well written, perfect, and brought out the chilly dark side to India rather than the sweet cultural hegemony and integrity brought out in most Indian fiction that sound like Indian youth have just one problem Love, and marrying his beau is what constitute his younger days.

Most people in my circle and the ones I meet are sure to drop ‘Two States’ the moment they hear that I love reading. Did I like Two States? I don’t want to demean it, but that story is not something unusual, it is there in every Indian movie. I was actually irritated on how every character is just a stereotype, I don’t know if it is a North Indian syndrome, where all north east or south Indian people look and behave the same; add to it the detailing on all south Indian females not waxing their arms.  How on every page I was like... stop it these things don’t happen in places other than your imagination. There are more real people with real issues, daily ones.

Compare it with Adiga, who in the very beginning warns what you can actually expect. The threat, the warning, it actually kept me interested, moving every page cherishing every single word. I even wondered half way, what sort of a woman I am that relishes and cheers reading such dark writing. But the truth is I really enjoyed the real portrayal of this country. Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry also brings out the darkness of the Emergency period and its impact on the real people, but with a little subtlety, while Adiga simply doesn’t seem to care.

I was so much in love with Adiga’s style that I went on to check out his Last man in Tower, which was one shade less dark. While Balram Halwai was a male from the lowest strata of Indian society, the characters from the Vishram Society are middle class, who are often portrayed as goodies, portrayed in the darkest hues. Can such people exist in real...? Never did this question come into my mind, since at some point of life most of us have seen these people exist near us, travelling by the same transport, going to the same shop, movies or office, staying next door.

But the pace was a bit relaxed, such a long story and the punch was just missing. The novel set me thinking, wandering between pages, how sick, creepy and deadly the human mind is. Between the assassinations did not go well with me. It neither looked like a collection of short stories, nor a novella. Some of the stories felt wanting a climax, while the same stories featured in some other story of the same collection, very disjoint and yet joint. Whatever the style, it did not go well with me. But then no news of any further work from him has been announced. I happened to read a few write-ups by him which were once again needless to say full of style, very much looking forward to reading more from him.

Remembering Manju...

Today is Manju’s birthday. The girl with the big smiling eyes, who immediately took me for a friend or sister, I don’t know what. We met at a computer academy. I was just out of school, and such a dud, very much in my own dream world, that I took time understanding and adjusting to the real world, with teachers being friendlier and less of disciplinarians feeling out of my imaginary lasso and almost flying. With all the students being elder to me, I was doted upon. That was the exact place I lost all my inhibitions at talking and making friends.

Coming back to Manju we travelled by the same bus to our destinations, after savoring pastries at the bakery near the bus stop. She was an English major, enough for me to be enslaved upon. Somebody to talk to me about literature and books is always more than anything I would ever wish for.

On one occasion when she asked my birthdate, she told me, that she was elder by exactly 3 years and 3 days, wasn’t that awesome.  By the time the information registered into me, she wondered how most of them around her had cancer. I was like, what, who has cancer, and she says, even you for that matter and I am dumbstruck and croak, but I don’t have cancer, and she corrects me without slighting me, that she meant my sun sign. Thus began my rendezvous with the sun signs, every time I get introduced to a person, or familiarize with an old acquaintance, I make a note of their sun sign, and instinctively match their personality with their sign.

Someday, when I was home from hostel, she took me to a temple, telling me that she had prayed to bring me along when there was some accident mentioned in the newspapers, of a bus that was also destined to reach Chennai. I did as I was told, I am still naïve and clumsy at things people do at temples, like, start from that deity, then this one, go left, go right, don’t turn and all that stuff, all the time wondering if she considered me so close, or loved and cared for me so much.

I think I listened to her, more than I talked to her, and maybe that made all the difference. The last time we met, I was still wondering what we were to each other, the thinker that I am, because I never felt we were friends, but I have always admired her and looked up to her, in a way I would have an elder sister. Almost 20 years since we last met; her memories still keep haunting and taunting me.