I laugh at the joke in "Nala Damayanthi" every time i watch it !
Yesterday, I had lunch at an interesting place - it's a only salad restaurant . You get to make your own salad with anything u ask for , or take any prepared salad ( which were good too ) . This got me thinking into my vegetarianism. Before I venture any further , I would like to say that i don't mean to critique anybodies food choice and that I'm not being sarcastic about anything anybody told me (some of which is going to follow ! ) .. i merely am using your words to express my thoughts :-)
Some days back a friend of mine asked me if I was vegetarian by choice - I thought about it & could not really arrive at an answer . The question , ofcourse , was did i choose to be a vegetarian, or is it because of some religious sentiments or any other thing. The way I think this works is that ,initially, you are what you are told to be - in the sense that when you are a kid , you just eat what your parents tell you to eat ( though they have a lot of difficulty in getting you to actually eat all that ! ). So, if you eat only vegetarian food , then thats what you are . If your parents thought that it was perfectly fine for you to have something - say rabbits meat ( which people tell me is really tasty ) , then you would just have it and consequently would become a meat eater.
Once, you actually start thinking & reasoning out what you eat , etc.. you would most probably stick to what you had before . I dont think there is anything religious or emotional attached to it .As a matter of fact , why is religion associated with so many things that it should not be associated with is still very puzzling to me ! ( but that would take an entire post by itself .. so I would not venture into that topic now ) . Though I haven't answered the question i asked in the beginning , I'm going to bring up something another friend of mine said - this was about how he read an email about how the animals were treated in these farms ( In case you haven't got any such email - it talks about how the animals are drugged so that their meat is better or something in those lines ) and after reading the email , he decided to switch to vegetarianism. With all due regards, this is a completely hypocritical statement - I mean , even if they were not drugged , your still killing innocent being for your food .. it's like your some primate ! . Today you see that chicken flitting around your back yard and tomorrow you cook it in your grill ?? !!
You don't need an email to tell you that it's a poor living being your killing ( the email just goes a step further in saying that your drugging the living creature , just so that you get more juicier meat ) . I'm not sure how long he's going to stick to his decision - because the basis of the decision seems too flimsy to me .
Getting back to the first question - Am I a vegetarian by choice ? - I dont know really . What I do know is that I think I can;t bear the thought that I'm eating something that was living - probably didn;t want to die this early .. but is dead coz I'm hungry .Are there any religious setiments attached - absolutely not . I consider my religious sentiments to be very sacred - it's only between me and God & not related to anything else !
Consider this - how do you think a cannibalistic society would sustain ? I don't even know if any exist today . But if they would , then would it be confortable for anybody to eat anything - logically it should , coz thats what you've been seeing since you are a kid ( i mean absolutely anything .. i dont mean to put up a totally gross post , but in my opinion there is absolutley no difference ) .
As a rule , I don't criticize anybody's food .. for the simple reason that I have no business to do so. If there is anybody at all who should be thinking about it , then it should be the individual eating it . So , what I'm trying to say here is that I'm not preaching vegetarianism. All I'm saying is - if you can , and want to , then think about it ( not vegetarianism , but about what you are eating ).
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7 comments:
Before anybody comments on this .. I wanted to do so ! ( commenting on my own post ;)) . this is by far the strongest post I have on my blog so far .. & if you feel wrong about anby ideas there , then just shoot out !
well, as usual it is going to be a long comment!
you are very right in many things..I think reasoning out anything is trying to give justification for the same;
anyways, it's a tricky subject and like you've mentioned most of our habits (not limited just to eating patterns!) are conditioned from a very young age.
Have you ever thought of milk and milk products, wool, leather and so many things we use!
I think its easy for us to feel strongly against unpleasant things when our comfort zone is the pleasant thing; and if we are comfortable with something, however unpleasant it may be, we can come up with thousand reasonings to justify it.
I am a 'Classic case' in that point and am not proud of it! :(
anu is a classic case? ROTFL. true true.
Shankar, we have all probably questioned our vegetarianism at some stage. and we are all hypocrites at some level, not only non veg.
but what is this about being primate? u think we are all civilised right now? there are hundred examples to the contrary. and what was good for our ancestors should be good for us too.
early 'civilisation' in india had a pasture (including our sacred cows) economy. now that we have other things to eat, we can't look down upon what our ancestors ate.
and finally, there is something called a food chain.
having said all this, whenever i taste meat, i feel disgusted. i even got headache once when there was nothing else to eat (it's all in the mind)
mine is a long comment too
k .. well .. the primate thing first .. i'm not sure how u interpreted the word .. what i meant was that man was like any other animal in the jungle .. kills other beings in the jungle when he is hungry.
Anu.. abt the comfort zone thing .. good one .. i agree with u ..
quoting from his highness, "I mean, even if they were not drugged, your still killing innocent being for your food .. it's like your some primate!"
shankar i wanted to tell you, firstly, that eating habits are not the only determinants of a civilised being. and many brahmins and jains are known to have done horrible things not even befitting an act of the jungle (and u r also defaming animals, who are more ethical than humans). and rabbis, who are stricter vegetarians, at times call for destruction of an entire civilisation. so ur term, even if it is one word, is v problematic.
killing other beings to eat has never been limited to jungles. am sure the very first city or village in india or elsewhere had primarily non-vegs.
in india there are as many obese ppl now as there are ppl who starve to death. is that not 'beastly' in the sense of the term you use it? some v. poor ppl in orrisa have to eat the thick skin of a buffalo coz there is REALLY nothing to eat.
Veg as both of u say comes from a comfort zone of having plenty.
alright alright, i am a hypocrite too and this is prob too serious. but 'primate' sums up ur entire post in a way -- ur understanding of civilisation as a concept.
mini post is over. and sorry
i wont go into "primate".. but its hard to believe but i am agreeing with all 3 of u abt comfort zone..
somebody asked me recently how come i am a vegetarian.. at first i thought it was a stupid question.. i just am.. my parents are, my family is.. but you see, thats not a sufficient reason either... coz 2 others there came from a family of veg and one of their parent or they chose to eat meat. so social conditioning can be broken.. so how come i am still a vegetarian? i told them the thought of meat freaks me out.. and i accept that i am hypocrite who can eat egg, wears leather shoes, but has a prob with non veg food ( ie only abt me eating it.. i dont judge other people on this)
And you still didn't answer the question.
When people ask me the question, my answer is yes.
Agreed that a persons upbringing is as a veggie, but then people make conscious decision to stick to it or not. There is no society to frown upon others these days, to keep peoples eating habits in check, so what stops people from changing their eating habits? Now, are you a vegetarian by choice? :-)
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