The Dilemma of eating meat:

I am an avid fan of non vegetarian cuisine. Always have been and, unless something dramatic happens – always will be. But the moral issues to be considered by a non vegetarian are tremendous.

If you take a moment and think of the steps that have gone into preparing your favorite tandoori chicken or biryani, they are, in chronological order - killing a innocent lamb or a chick by slitting open or twisting its neck, ripping out its skin, tearing it limb from limb, boiling it in hot water, adding spices to it to make it palatable and then actually eating it – it makes one kind of blanch in disgust – doesn’t it? Am I really such a cruel person? Imagine a species superior to humans with a penchant for the human flesh. Imagine this ghastly species cultivating us in cages, giving us sustenance and then carefully selecting the most suitable ones among us and subjecting us to the same treatment. Imagine this species especially favoring tender human babies for their extra tasty flesh. Revolting? But then isn’t that exactly what we do?

Coming back to my original question - am I a cruel person. I had though not. I do not step on even an ant knowingly. When I remove cobwebs, I routinely avoid killing the spiders, although I know that these persistent buggers would go ahead and simply spin another web. I have always loved all varieties of animals – I have had pets ranging from puppies, kittens, white mice, frogs, ladybugs and what not. Heck, I even have my favorite lizard under my table that enjoys watching me work on my laptop and nods his head knowledgably when I issue rhetorical statements. Then what possesses me when I sit down to eat? Why do I turn in to a demon? Being a Hindu, I am forbidden against partaking any kind of non vegetarian fare on any day. Period. Naturally I manage, rather conveniently, not to ruminate too much on that while nibbling on a fish finger.

But then what exactly is vegetarian food? Is killing a plant for food better than killing an animal? Do plants feel any less pain when their leaves are ripped off their branches for food? Is depriving a calf of milk, so that I can drink it instead, fair? Imagine that same obnoxious species mentioned above having a proclivity for human milk. Unimaginable again – isn’t it? Is any food purely vegetarian? Does the avowed vegetarian Gujarati who so casually sprinkles the humble table salt on his dhoklas, theplas and khakras realize where this salt originates form?

As the Lawrence Sanders character Archibald McNally said famously: plussed I am non