This is my beef

Some years back I met an Indian doctor at a party in a mutual friend’s house. Having been sufficiently interesting to get her phone number, I called her couple of days later while having dinner at home. While the small talk was meandering through inanities, she asked me what I was eating. My answer, beef tacos, elicited a high pitch expression of disgust that sounded something like “YEEEEEEEUUUUUUCK!” Just the thing I wanted to hear when enjoying a meal in my own home.

Really, why do vegetarians develop this sense of revulsion that they are quick to express? It is annoying to have someone having a philosophical objection to one’s choice of food, and then expressing those objections in an uncalled for manner.

I usually ignore such verbal assaults, but having the need to write and having a platform to express ideas I will try to present a point of view that will hopefully make some vegetarians shut their mouth, especially when I am eating.

The first objection you vegetarians have is the physical nausea you feel when you see meat. This is understandable, since your body is reacting to the unfamiliar. Uncooked meat does smell, but only in large quantities usually seen in fresh meat markets. A couple of pounds of fresh meat has a faint scent that is not discernible unless you are rubbing your noses in it. The other reason for this revulsion could be the sight of meat. This argument held some water when meat markets were not as prolific and the sight of meat brought forth unfamiliar physical responses. But this is 2007! Go to any major market in the city, and you will find a meat market attached to it. The super markets stock fresh and packed meat adjacent to the frozen food, and ice creams section. Vegetarians, you should make daily treks to such markets and get used to the sight of meat. Pick a pound bag of meat and repeat, “This is food which my fellow human beings eat, and I will learn to respect it”. Do this for a month, and I guarantee you will not wrinkle your nose at my dinner table.

Then comes the mother of all arguments. Non-vegetarians are snuffing out a life. Read your science, people. Spend some time and read Tompkins & Bird's “The Secret life of Plants”. Only then let he who is without sin, cast the first stone.

Having been raised a vegetarian, I first ate meat at my 8th grade physics teacher’s house. Ever since then I have enjoyed eating meat, albeit in moderation. So vegetarians let me tell you something.

Take any vegetable of your choice and choose a basic cooking method. Steam, Grill or Char. Having cooked your vegetable, take it to the dinner table, add condiments of choice and take the first bite. What do you feel? Nothing. Its food for sustenance that passes through your system without evoking any emotion. Which is why you folks have to smother the vegetables in some tasty medium like gravy or sambhar or other masking factors.

Now let me tell you about a quarter pound of beef grilled medium rare topped with grilled onions. As I cut the first piece, the body starts responding. It releases extra saliva in anticipation of that juicy morsel entering the mouth. As I chew the meat, it releases its juices into my body and satisfies the primal need of the carnivore in me. The satiation felt after eating a piece of meat is a feeling no vegetable on earth can elicit. Don’t believe me? Turn on Discovery when a show about Africa is on. See how the grass eaters are always skittish and nervous in every surrounding. Then check the lion, sitting in the shade looking out at the plains yawning contentedly. Vegetarians, you have never felt something like that.

Ever.

With folded hands

I have a problem with God, which I hope S/He addresses quickly. Well, my problem is not with God per se, but with all those people who have chosen to build temples and then have chosen to ignore the most important ingredient there. The prasadam.

Time was when the dull monotony of a temple / religious gathering visit was alleviated by the ritual of collecting prasadam. When growing up in Mulund, I had to regularly visit the Shivankovil and the Raghavendra matham. Shivankovil had paal-pazham for prasadam everyday and on Maha Shivrathri there was thandai. Raghavendra matham did not have a de facto prasadam, but more often than not, there would be faithful handing out sweets. There also was eru-thengai, which embodied the saying “its not the kill, it’s the thrill of the chase”. Raghavendra matham also had a fragrant akshatai which one was supposed to put on one’s head, but was used as a mouth freshener after a smoking a cigarette on the sly. A visit to these temples left one well satiated.

Then there were the saarvjanik festivals. Chundals during Navratri (To all the mamis who filch on the chundal but keep kolu: A kolu without chundal is like a marriage without consummation), modak and other assorted prasadams during Ganpati. The most generous Ganpati mandal was the one outside Matunga station. During the Ganpati, a bunch of us would make regular treks from Podar college to the mandap and collect prasadam with cupped hands. The men inside would not bat an eyelid, but they did request us to say a prayer. Anything karega for that mix of nuts, white sugar and Godfatherly compassion.

But things are looking bleak. A visit to the major temples in the city and elsewhere requires one to buy a packet of sweets outside the temple, carry it though the temple and then eat it outside as prasadam. I wonder which demented idiot thought of this practice and then popularized it. I have never felt the heavenly benevolence coursing through me after eating BYOP. Then there are places that give out flowers as prasadam. Flowers that someone plucked from the plant, thereby snuffing out all chances of the flower propagating its seeds to its next generation.. And what is one supposed to do with this flower ? Cant eat it, cant keep it, will stink the next day. Unless it’s a dried lotus flower dipped in a sugar-saffron syrup sprinkled with pistachio flakes, flowers are not appropriate as prasadam.

One place that stands out in this prasadam desert is the temple in North Bombay that gives out sheera as prasadam many mornings. This is not any ordinary sheera but a godly concoction of ghee, brown raisins, cashew nuts and sooji. Every time I visit Bombay, I go for a run that culminates at this temple in Juhu. After buying a newspaper and then removing my shoes, I make a quick tour inside and collect a generous helping of the prasadam in the newspaper. Sometimes, the man giving out the prasadam wonders why I ask for more. My response, which I always suppress owing to the divinity that I am about to partake, is ‘taara baapa no soo jayech ?’