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An oldie but a goldie!


On being vegetarian….
 3.1.10

Being vegetarian is a highly overstated virtue being propagated by its proponents to put the fear of God into the non-believers and cow them into submission. The same people will say “eat to live” not “live to eat”, but they lead their whole life by analyzing what they eat. When you eat to live, you also logically should eat whatever food is given to you, vegetarian or otherwise! Eat to live may mean being careful in what you indulge in – whether it is clean (prepared in a hygienic fashion, halal/kosher if you are a Moslem/Jewish), laden with cholesterol (to clog up the arteries), rich with carbohydrates (which will increase your abdominal girth and place you at high risk of getting a coronary event) etc. etc…

Maybe if you are Gautama Buddha, you will eat whatever is served to you, whether on a platter or on a leaf so as not to offend the feeder. According to the Mahayana sect, the Enlightened one was fed contaminated (? tainted) pork meat which he consumed willingly as his time to attain Nirwana was imminent. Of course, there is always two sides to the coin. The Hinayana sect, on the other hand, believe that he succumbed to mesenteric infarction which may be a common occurrence for his advanced age of 80! I digress… way off tangent...

The story of veganism is the story of the affluence of man. When a man is a beggar, he would scavenge on leftovers at the bin. Life would be blissful, a full stomach and a warm place would be Shangri-La for him. As his stature (the beggar, no longer a vagabond but has an abode) improves, he will be picky on his food. He would want his food clean and unpolluted by other people and animals’ body secretion! Later, he would long for food to be prepared in a certain fashion – Chicken ala Kyiv, tikka style, Duck Peking style and the list goes on and on… He would later be “enlightened”, he will suddenly realize that he has been doing it all wrong all this while. He will have the compulsion to be a vegetarian. Then, the need to go organic and so on and so on…

There is a thin line between ingenuity and insanity. The heights of idiosyncrasy to stay vegan took new meanings when my daughter actually refused the “roti canai” offered at the temple, assuming that egg is an inherent ingredient of this Malaysian dish!

Man is an animal of convenience. He will alter rules and regulations to suit his whims and fancies. For instance, Brahmins are generally accepted as epitomes of vegetarianism. But wait a minute, Brahmins residing around the Bay of Bengal actually consume fish and their counterpart in the Kashmir Valley enjoy mutton. On a personal note, I know of a Brahmin who likes his steak rare!

The Art of Robert Kingsley
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