Top News

Let me tell you a short fairy tale. Once upon a time, humans ate to survive. End of the story. Why, you ask? Look at us now. Food, which was to sustain us, now defines us. We found religion, we created castes and politics, and we somehow added food to the mix. We even started putting people into boxes according to their dietary choices. And if that wasn’t enough, now we are labelling ourselves too, with detailed captions!

The vegetarian nobody could explain

Out there, it has been scary for someone like me or my schoolfriend Siraj Ahmad Kidwai. Coming from non-vegetarian communities and growing up in the late 1970s-80s, we were the odd ones out for not eating meat. Siraj says he was initiated into vegetarianism by his father, “and between the two of us, we absorbed decades of the same refrain, ‘Yeh toh pandit log hain (These two are Brahmins)’,” he rues. That’s a harder thing to be than it sounds in a community where vegetarianism has no place. Wedding after wedding, I made a meal out of raita, roti, and zarda (sweet rice) while everything else on the table was off-limits.”

I had it easier. In my case, they tried to feed me meat once, but I spat it out. My meat-loving family respected my wish or loved the meat too much to risk wasting another juicy morsel on me, but I never ate it again. In fact, being in the minority (and we know how it is for those folks), I was grateful that I wasn’t being forced. The worst my kid brothers did to me was sit on either side, discuss the pieces on their plates in detail, and pass them from right under my nose. But my grandmother died worrying about who would marry me.

One tap — then press “Add” on Google

The questions that have followed us

A man did marry me, aeons later, ‘despite’ my being a vegetarian (same community, so same food habits, you see!). Thankfully, the matriarch had given up meat after diksha (a Hindu initiation ritual) from her guru. While that was a relief, I faced a volley of questions. Apparently, it is absolutely fine if you believe in a guru and change your diet overnight. But you cannot be listening to your own brain. So, I had to fend off questions like, “Who is your guru? Then why don’t you eat? Oh! You never ate?” From there, it only went downhill, either “How will you know if you never try?” or “Then what is your reason?”

For Siraj, marriage didn’t end the pressure; it just gave it a new target. “My wife, Ambarin, is vegetarian too, and once we were married, she absorbed it for both of us. ‘You start eating, and then you make him eat’ has been thrown her way.”

Community pride, served on a plate

Over the years, I have noticed that communities wear their food traditions as a badge of pride. A dear friend-colleague in a Delhi-based national newspaper told me, “If you visit even the poorest among us, we may not have a decent shirt on our back, but we will feed you the best biryani.” No prizes for guessing who he meant, but I was amused. Because I would rather that you got yourselves good clothes, comfortable shoes, and a roof over your head before you dug into exotic biryani!

I can somehow still digest this need to take pride in whatever our community represents, even if it is food. But how do I explain the need to look down on another because of what they eat? In the last few years, India has witnessed a growing green-gorging gang, fuelled by the conviction that abstaining from meat is a religious obligation. Who will tell these unquestioning followers of a particular party that their community is far from monolithic, includes countless meat-eaters, and has thrived across the country despite the perpetual khatraa (danger) they claim it faces?

And since they have certain days when they don’t eat meat, as a dietary outlier, I find it laughable that what’s impure on some days is absolutely fine to eat the rest of the time.

Again, you do you. But don’t pretend a man wasn’t lynched over rumours about the contents of his fridge, because it happened. It keeps bringing me back to the realisation that we have overcomplicated things: first food, then meat, and then a specific meat has come to define people as either pious or too impure to live.

Why must every meal come with a reason?

This constant need to categorise and sub-categorise people based on what they eat only pushes me further in the opposite direction. I have no desire to know who eats what or why. Vegetarians claim they love animals and can’t bear to eat them; meat-eaters claim they are keeping the food chain alive. Personally, I do not have such a high opinion of us as a species that I would take either argument seriously.

From vegetarian to vegan: The labels keep growing

Just when people like Siraj and I had got used to keeping our heads down and not getting into any debates over food, the world went on to complicate it further by dividing itself into vegans (no dairy), pescatarians (plant-based, with seafood), and even flexitarians (who eat a mostly vegetarian diet with occasional inclusion of meat). Now why is the last one even a category? Because last time I checked, that is most Indian homes: a mostly vegetarian diet with a few meat dishes thrown in. 

We have reached a point where every plate must carry a manifesto. But some of us don’t eat according to ideology. We eat what our brains tell us to, what our taste buds enjoy, and, with age, what doctors permit. I would suggest this to all. Forget what your faith, community, and family tell you and eat as you please. That’s some food for thought.