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| Octopus soup anyone? |
I have been travelling on work for a few years now, usually on short term assignments with fellow colleagues from India! And as is typical for Indian work colleagues we don’t really bond well (or pretend at least) unless we have had our share of ‘arguments’. I have had numerous ones on topics ranging from presidential campaigns to sports teams, from the state of the economy to the more serious issues of our times like who’s hotter between Scarlet Johansson and Megan Fox? Scarlett of course! But no other topic of argument has come up as often as the great debate on Vegetarian vs. Non Vegetarian food.
Now this is a topic of discussion that has been fought out passionately across the length and breadth of our county (and others considering we pretty much inhabit every part of the world now!) and for good reason. No other country that I know of has such a high percentage of vegetarians. A fairly reliable (or contentious?) free online encyclopedia (got it yet?) tells me that as much as 31% of Indians are vegetarians!! No they don’t eat ANY meat, poultry, fish, seafood or in most cases even eggs. Onions and garlic is also taboo among the Jains who number as much as 4.2 million followers. It’s only natural that when you travel abroad (for the record I have absolutely no problems) where a spicy vegan meal is “challenging” to find, to say the least, you end up hearing all kinds of arguments for vegetarianism. (Partly out of frustration I suspect J). Arguments range from vegetarianism being the healthier choice to cruelty to animals. But the one argument that is hard to “bite” is “My Choice”.
Is it really your free choice or is it based on conditioning? Just like mine may I add before you jump to the conclusion that I have an agenda! The “free choice” argument doesn’t really fly. The reason I don’t eat lizards today is because I have grown up in a culture which finds eating lizards “gross” and distasteful!! If I were born and brought up in some part of China I might quite relish the thought of “sundried spicy lizard ” or whatever its equivalent is!! Same rule applies to vast majority of Indian vegetarians. The only reason they don’t eat meat or fish is because it’s not acceptable in their socio-religious environment. They find chicken, lamb, beef or even the delightfully tasty pomfrets just as “gross” as I find eating lizards. In the perfect world we would have a fully understanding (in this scenario that would be ‘taste’ I guess) of all our choices and our choices would not be as influenced as it is today by where and which families we are born into! But obviously it doesn’t work that way. Unless you are the guy from Man vs. Food, our choices for the most parts have been made before we were born and we just find rationalizations to justify those choices. With a deeper understanding of factors that drive my choices (or the lack of it) I am ready to experiment. Frog Legs? Sure. Lizards? Ehh…not sure if it’s healthy J
