An Almost-Vegan who also eats ‘Non-Veg’?: Diets beyond definition

 

(wrote this article initially sometime in 2015-16, at the height of tensions about vegetarian and non-vegetarian messes in the IITs.)

A hard to define diet

I have trouble digesting Lactose. So I do not drink milk except in small measures in tea. I eat curd and cheese only sometimes. I do eat ghee in decent amounts, as my main source of ‘good fat’. My home is a vegetarian one, and I have grown as such. As with many Hindus of vegetarian families/castes, I did not know much about ‘non-vegetarian’ foods till I was in school. But since then, as I entered college life, owing to my love for trying cuisines, of relating with the different states of my country and feeling closer to the lives of my friends who now came from various parts of India, I have eaten and still occasionally do eat ‘non-vegetarian’ food – fermented fish paste called Ngari from Manipur, Calamari or lamb starters in a pub, Beef recipes of Kerala, or even the slow cooked meatballs from Kashmir have all been on my occasional list. To top this confused list, I did grow up eating and loving egg but after a bout of jaundice, I have become allergic to it. So in recent years it has been no to eggs but yes to a rare tandoori chicken. Most confusing.

So when people ask me if I am vegetarian or non-vegetarian, I have to stop myself from launching into a long thesis for explanation. I guess, functionally I am on most days a vegetarian who has less dairy products. An oddity; an almost vegan, who sometimes eats some meat.

An eclectic morality

These are of course my personal dilemmas, yet I feel that there are insights here that are worth sharing. They point to the fact that macro debates about diets and morality do not always do justice to the unique biographies of people. This combination of diet that I have developed over the years is not completely random. It emerged as an evolving understanding of what works for my body and my values. I think my diet has a peculiar morality of its own. I do think about both environmental and nutritional concerns too. Totally unrelated to the veg-non-veg maha-debate in India, I try as much as possible not to buy packaged biscuits and chips, though I am very fond of them. Fresh stuff from a bakery or a ‘Hot Chips’ stall, in a paper bag is preferable. I control how much I order food online, as I dislike the use of plastics in packaging and the fact that some poor soul is zipping through traffic and pollution to fetch me my meal. I prefer - especially since I have matured in age - to either eat at home or myself step out to eat. Here too, whenever possible I love to patronize clean but common-man friendly dhabas, perhaps due to my limited pocket but also because they feel good. Surely gourmet cuisine or visits to capitalist Starbucks also happen. But I keep it in check.

Purity concerns in the Hindu system (the tradition I was born in), such as not eating onion or garlic are also part of my horizon. Garlic is used only sometimes in my house. I am very much at home in that diet. For me it is health and comfort itself. It may or may not make for a purer person or soul, but it suits me. Just like perhaps for a meat eater, a chicken broth can be comforting while recovering from illness. Some nutritionists suggest that the bacterial climate that develops in our gut takes shape according to the diet we are used to. As a result, that which we are used to most, nourishes us best. I like this idea, because it helps to temper opposed stands on the question of – what is man’s true food. I recall how in college, some meat-eating peers of mine who came from the small towns in the south, actually lost a lot of muscle weight after moving to Delhi. The messes provided much lesser meat than they were used to, and they could only rarely afford to spend on meat from outside.

The eating of meat will always remain a peripheral activity for me. But equally so, I do no like shutting myself out. I feel as if I would always want to be capable of eating at the home of any of my acquaintances. In some romantic sort of way, it makes me feel pan-Indian. It was also part of feeling close to some guys I fancied or dated! Also, somehow what my home denies, I get from the outside. This is perhaps an extension of the way upper-caste Hindu families divided the inside and outside-home spaces. We know how in many homes, men eat meat when they go out, but do not do so at home. And women who are often the traditional upholders of family tradition, choose to remain vegetarian. With women shedding these roles perhaps some of this is changing.

What I find is that my diet is really a mixture of the caste/community traditions I was born into, of my own particular family, of more recent health and environment concerns and also my desire to be feel connected with life beyond myself.

Constructive ways to live with difference

Some years ago there were tensions in some universities wherein those who were vegetarian wanted separate messes to eat. These still crop up and of course there are places where a ‘truce’ has been engineered by way of removing meat from meals altogether. I personally do not feel much disgust, but I do understand that there are vegetarians in India who do feel uncomfortable with meat around them. To some degree such discomfort is as worthy of recognition as is the meat eater’s desire for her food. But there are limits. In many ways our discomfort is the result of the fact that we were taught to to be disgusted by meat since we were young. For many Hindus this whole cultural shame around meat expresses in a very strange manner. As an object of both shame and attraction. Perhaps this is why meat and alcohol – you know the young guys eating beer and chicken in their cars on highways – is such a big deal. Both are denied pleasures.

A story my mother used to tell me comes to mind. While she lived as a child in Daryaganj in an apartment complex, she recalls that they had Bengali neighbours. On the day the lady of the house cooked fish, she opened her window, shouted out to everyone ‘close your windows I’m making fish’. And thus the others who did not like the smell did so. Co-existence was not affected. The bengali husband was famous for making home-made crackers (anaars) at home and was also an amateur homoeopath. I do not mean to say that this is an example to be followed – it belongs to another time – but it does show a style of living where differences need not turn into antagonism and neither do they always require some kind og hyper-global multiculturalism.

The Vegan Challenge

Meanwhile the vegan challenge to meat eating is of a very different kind. While some vegetarian purists might be jumping onto that ship, veganism is strictly about animal cruelty, especially so in the modern world. Many westerners who give up meat, do so on purely ethical grounds, even if they really love eating meat. It is not about satvik purity, though it could be blended into it. After all even the histories of satvik thinking are multiple. They do have caste associations, but as is well known the interest in vegetarianism grew in mainstream Hinduism through the ethical influences of alternative voices such as Buddhism, Jainism or even sects within Hinduism. I find it fascinating that Gandhi’s vegetarian stance was itself a blend of bania morality and what he learnt from vegetarian societies when he visited England. Few people know about the old histories of vegetarianism in Europe that began in the early 19^th century.

This much cannot be denied – that the mass meat as well as dairy industry make an awful life for animals. Forced and repeated pregnancies, mass killing of baby animals – like male chickens or calves, crowded conditions, artificial growth conditions, horrible old age. It is organized torture in mass numbers. While the romantic image of cow’s milk is the medieval picture of a cow in a field or tied to the post outside the house, this reality does not match most of our urban consumption of dairy today.

Negotiating our histories and culture around diet

Yet also one cannot just ignore the importance of cow products in India, and just because they might align at times with Hindutva, it doesn’t mean they are always synonymous with it. For instance ghee remains a prime source of good fat in vegetarian diets. In fact as the trend of processed oils has retreated, ghee has re-emerged as a healthy option. It’s importance in Ayurveda also cannot be ignored.

Reiki healers N.K. and Savita Sharma suggested years ago in their book – Milk a Silent Killer - adult humans may not even need to have milk. After all man is the only creature who drinks milk as an adult even after being breastfed. No other creature - be it the strong lion, the quick deer, or the strong horse – does this. Today many problems of obesity, gall stones and joint troubles are increasingly linked with milk, at least by alternative medicine if not standard biomedicine. It is now more widely known that a craze to drink milk and be healthy and even match up to the advanced West emerged in China, as late as the 19^th century. Before that their cuisine surely had meats, but no diary. It always surprises me how recent our memories are, but how deep we think they go.

So much is contextual. Milk remained an important food in a country where there was poverty, where mothers could die giving birth or may not have enough milk (a reality even now). Also the romance of milk, is linked with agricultural and pastoral castes and lifestyles. Remember how Lord Krishna is from a cow-herding profession. What I begin to understand today, is that milk is not a necessity. For those who can digest it, and who cannot afford other sources of nutrition occasional milk drinking could be a valuable option. Our homoeopath also told us that milk is in fact like a complete food. It can stand in for a meal. Those of us who drink it along with three square meals may end up overweight or with calcium deposits in the body.

It is useful not to become too attached to any one culture’s ideals. Ayurveda provides us with a living heritage. For instance, our kitchen spices (with variations across communities) already provide us with several medicinal benefits. At the same time, just because Ayurveda may advocate milk, we do not need to stick to that. We live in different times. We are less active. Our diseases have changed. Maybe a farmer needs milk today but a librarian does not. Genetic data has also shown that some cultures have greater lactose intolerance than others, as they evolved to suit their climate and diet needs.

Good to be wary of diet trends

I like the idea of gradual shifts. Nutrition science is teaching us new things. But it’s rhetoric keep shifting. One ought to be careful not to jump into diet trends. One can watch and adjust. Get an occasional blood test to make sure a nutrient balance is there – if one can afford it. The nutritionist Rujuta Diwakar says that what we have eaten since long in our own kitchens (whether it is meat, dairy, or Jain food!), should be respected. Our bodies are used to it and there is old wisdom in it. One ought to adapt it to one’s new decisions.

She observes that in many homes, eating meat was not an everyday affair. For one, it used to be costlier than pulses and vegetables. Then in some castes religion dictated that meat be eschewed on particular days of the week. So in effect our diets were more vegetarian with controlled meat eating. This is just one example, of how we can adapt our cultural sensibilities to help us as we navigate a very different age and a growing climate crisis.