No Meat, Me Vegetarian!

My first non-trivial post and I start off with something which bothered me a month ago. I spent the summer at Sprint Research Labs at a pretty place in the Bay area called Burlingame where, in the words of my manager, 'rich white families live complete with their kids and dogs enjoying the summer Sunday barbecues'!

As it happened, my group of friends in the lab were all non-vegetarians and as a result I frequented a lot of basically no-veggie-on-menu restaurants. Now for someone who places a fair bit of importance on good food, this was a major change. Although Pittsburgh can't match good old India, it was still OK. I was surrounded by numerous Tam Brahms, Gujju Boys and Marwari bodybuilders. And all of these budding scientists are veggies. So, it can be said that I was nicely ensconced from the big bad world - I didn't have to put that much effort to eat vegetarian :)

Coming back to California, given that I suddenly felt responsible, each lunch/dinner became a long question-answer session in the restaurant; either with the waiter, if he/she was not sure then with the more important looking person and if even he/she was not sure, then with the manager. "Does it have lard?" "Hmm, looks good, No meat, I mean I am a vegetarian, so no meat" "Ahh, so fish works right?" "Ohh no no, no meat means no beef, no chicken, no pork and no fish as well!", "Does it have oyster oil? or maybe fish oil then?" "Is egg OK"? "Dude, do you eat anything at all?!" were par for the course. And having a lot of Chinese lab-mates didn't help! :) Then it started outside restaurants to pretty much anywhere I had any food. "These marshmallows look good, but seems like they contain gelatin - is it fine?" "What about Kosher Gelatin? Must be better no?" (In fact, the kosher one is worse for Hindus at least, as it is sometimes made from cow skin compared to pig bones for the standard gelatin!) "Okay, definitely Pectin should be fine then"!

I dutifully did this for a little more than a month - then when eating out became such a chore that I resolved to ask myself why exactly I am vegetarian and why I need to take so much care. Most of the Indians are simply raised that way - they are vegetarians, just as the Sun rises from the east! In my case as well, I just continued with my up-bringing and despised meat as second nature without really giving it much thought. As eating vegetarian was easy enough, I just continued with it! After the hassles in California, my idea was that I will try to answer my vegetarianism as far as possible by using only logical arguments. This is because cooked meat in general doesn't really gross me out unlike many other Indians. Sure, I would hate to sit in-front of people removing the shells and eating crabs 'fresh' from the cooking pot, but I don't have a problem with cooked dishes containing meat (except some sea-food which are frankly stink-bombs!). Also as I am a traditional Telugu/Kannada Brahmin, clearly not everything can be explained by hard logic. But still, I think it gives me reasonable room to answer myself in a reasonable way why I can't/can eat marshmallows! :)

Hinduism just does not allow beef consumption. The reason is that Hindus revere the Cow. She is a giver and symbolizes fertility, abundance and life. She eats grass and gives us milk. She helps the farmers to till the land. She is docile and hardworking. She acts as mode of transport. Even the cow-dung is useful for humans! I can't think of any other animal which is useful to the humans in such a way! It is in fact but natural that Hindus began to worship her. Now you don't go and eat the one you worship, right?

What about other meat products then? Chicken? Pork? As far as I know, Hinduism does not really say anything about these. I don't think that they are "prohibited" as beef is, for even Brahmins. I asked my parents as to why I can't eat these (fearing an angry response though! :) ). Surprisingly (although a little reluctantly), they had no problem in me eating meat, but still their parental advisory was not to. Upon more prodding my dad said that not consuming meat is a way of discipline. It is a way of showing that you can control your senses and allows you to live a more 'dharmic' (aka religious and righteous) life. Hence, we Brahmins should not eat meat.

Fair enough I thought. But the actual reason for me had to be more than this. Some would say, we should not kill animals. Note that surely our ancestors must have been eating meat. I guess after all, the earliest humans had to be hunters right? In fact, if we did not eat meat, then the human race would not have survived at all for organized agriculture to flourish! So, I don't think there is anything inherently 'in-human' in killing animals for food. But I do think that there is definitely something in-human to systematically do some kind of mass industrial 'production' of animals and bloat them to monstrous levels, all for the sole purpose of killing them for food! Isn't animal life something important? One would say don't the vegetarians kill plants then? Yes, but being humans, don't we have a hierarchy of living beings? Fellow homo sapiens are at the top, sentient beings who can convey us their pain are next and plants are after that. Clearly, that is why cannibalism is despised everywhere (well, almost!). Thus, according to me we have a greater responsibility towards animal life. Plants are important too, but as nature has told us to eat either plants or animals, eating plants is OK! Consequently, I felt that the modern meat production system is unnatural and it is fundamentally different than the natural instinct guiding the humans to kill animals in the wild. I abhor this and hence I do not eat meat.

What about stuff like gelatin etc? I think they fall under the same category as shoes and leather belts. These are primarily made from dead animals - basically animals are not killed for it (for the standard varieties I purchase anyway!). Hence, I decided it is fine to wear leather belts and eat products containing gelatin like marshmallows!

I agree I may have taken help from religion at some places, but at least now I have a better understanding of what makes me vegetarian. In any case, for lunch and dinners, food is not as important as whom you are there with! :)