On Friday, Sunshine and I were invited to my friend Rumi's place. She bought her own house and moved there recently and she invited her girlfriends and their kids to celebrate. The main attractions for the evening were her scrumptious chicken biriyani and mutton curry. There was a small problem though - I am an on again off again vegetarian and I am in 'on mode' at the moment. The last time we met, I still ate chicken and seafood and I forgot to mention that I had turned vegetarian again, when Rumi invited me.
I have a difficult relationship with non-vegetarian food. I love seafood and like to indulge in indian preparations of chicken once in a while. On rare occasions, I have eaten lamb and enjoyed it too. But it troubles my conscience to eat non-vegetarian food. There is the obvious problem that you have to kill a living thing to eat meat or seafood. I grew up in a coastal region and seafood was part of our diet almost every day. So, though having to kill an animal does not exactly make me happy, it doesn't trouble me enough to turn vegetarian. What really troubles me is the hunger that is so widespread all over the world. Every time I eat meat, the images of hungry children's faces haunt me and makes me think of all the resources that had to go into getting that piece of meat on my plate. A small percentage of the people in the world gets to consume such a large percentage of the resources. I know that this is true for almost everything in life, but when it comes to something so basic as food, it seems all the more unfair. It sometimes makes me loathe myself that I would willingly cause more environmental degradation and consume more resources while so many people starve, just to satisfy my palate. However, I am a foodie and the glutton inside me wins many times. Since I am too weak to become a vegetarian permanently, I try it for a few months at a time.
Rumi was mortified that I didn't inform her about my food preference. But I enjoyed her vegetarian starter dahi bhalla (lentil fritters) and I even had some gravy from the mutton curry and ate some rice sans chicken from the chicken biriyani. Rumi and her other friends were curious about my on again off again vegetarianism and asked me about the reason for it. I actually felt very embarrassed while explaining my reasons. For one, I sounded like an environmental nutcase to myself. The other reason was, I did not want to sound preachy or superior or worse still condemning about other people's choices.
Sunshine loved the mutton curry that Rumi made and asked for several helpings. He loves chicken and his caretakers at the daycare have told me that he eats eagerly when there is fish on the menu. I wonder if it is because these are things which he does not get to eat at home. In any case, for the next few months atleast I do not plan to eat or cook meat or fish.
I have a difficult relationship with non-vegetarian food. I love seafood and like to indulge in indian preparations of chicken once in a while. On rare occasions, I have eaten lamb and enjoyed it too. But it troubles my conscience to eat non-vegetarian food. There is the obvious problem that you have to kill a living thing to eat meat or seafood. I grew up in a coastal region and seafood was part of our diet almost every day. So, though having to kill an animal does not exactly make me happy, it doesn't trouble me enough to turn vegetarian. What really troubles me is the hunger that is so widespread all over the world. Every time I eat meat, the images of hungry children's faces haunt me and makes me think of all the resources that had to go into getting that piece of meat on my plate. A small percentage of the people in the world gets to consume such a large percentage of the resources. I know that this is true for almost everything in life, but when it comes to something so basic as food, it seems all the more unfair. It sometimes makes me loathe myself that I would willingly cause more environmental degradation and consume more resources while so many people starve, just to satisfy my palate. However, I am a foodie and the glutton inside me wins many times. Since I am too weak to become a vegetarian permanently, I try it for a few months at a time.
Rumi was mortified that I didn't inform her about my food preference. But I enjoyed her vegetarian starter dahi bhalla (lentil fritters) and I even had some gravy from the mutton curry and ate some rice sans chicken from the chicken biriyani. Rumi and her other friends were curious about my on again off again vegetarianism and asked me about the reason for it. I actually felt very embarrassed while explaining my reasons. For one, I sounded like an environmental nutcase to myself. The other reason was, I did not want to sound preachy or superior or worse still condemning about other people's choices.
Sunshine loved the mutton curry that Rumi made and asked for several helpings. He loves chicken and his caretakers at the daycare have told me that he eats eagerly when there is fish on the menu. I wonder if it is because these are things which he does not get to eat at home. In any case, for the next few months atleast I do not plan to eat or cook meat or fish.
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