Food Sensibilities

You know when the supposed-to-be-motivating team dinners and unavoidable lunches with acquaintances become much more painful to me than they usually are? When the topic happens to be on food habits.

Here is a sample:
"You dont drink?", asks the team mate in a friendly tone.
"No"
"You dont smoke?", unable to hide his surprise.
"No"
"You dont even eat chicken?", the italics for "even" would barely convey the utter shock he would experience.
"No"
"Man, you are amazing. Do you at least eat eggs?", the shock has now turned to pity and the look in his eyes tells that he cannot survive another "no" for an answer.
"I eat eggs. In fact, I love them", would be my biggest sentence in the whole conversation.
"Thank God, you at least eat eggs", he exclaims, a mighty relieved now - and in his book my existence is not as useless as it would have been if by any chance I did not eat eggs.

I escape quite easily. But, there is always someone at the table who does not eat eggs. They would get the same questions mentioned above. And the "no" for eggs prompts some more mindless questions.
"Oh you dont eat eggs. So you dont eat cakes?"
"I dont eat usually. And whenever I eat, I check with them if they have eggless cakes"
"What about icecreams? Even many icecreams have eggs"
"Oh I did not know. Anyway, I dont eat egg in egg form, but you have to survive na?", the pure veggie throws an emphatic laughter.
"Thats tough man, why dont you eat? Which caste you are?"

I will already be in the last stages of my WTF mode. Somebody please take me away from this place, for Ramssake!

And then, the discussion goes on how his brothers eat everything (even though their caste forbids them to eat) and being so proud of being "dharmabhrasht". The veggie exclaims how their kid is even more of a strict vegetarian than them and how their legacy is in safe hands and animals can roam around fearlessly near them. I dont know if you were in the middle of similar conversations and if they even irritate in the first place. I personally find it very repetitive, dumb, boring and highly uncreative.

I know people who indulge in this conversation in my presence would not read my blog, but still I have to vent out my frustration. I neither relate to these superior-feeling non-veggies or the holier-than-thou veggies. I find myself quite lonely when it comes to "food sensibilities" [Food habits is different from food sensibilities :)] I am a veggie who eats eggs. And this is not because I should not eat meat because my caste forbids me to. My reason for not eating meat may sound very silly, but this is the reason why I never consciously experimented. Whenever I think of eating any meat, I would imagine that animal roaming around in my stomach. Now, dont laugh - this is a serious mental block I have. For so may years, I did not eat brinjal for the reason that I had seen a worm near my home quite regularly, that resembled the cut piece of a brinjal :D I have unknowingly eaten chicken and beef once. I neither have pride nor guilt or even regret about that. You tell me that jellies contain pork or mayonnaise contains elephant meat, I will not stop eating them :) I dont go on lecturing people who eat meat that human intestine is not constructed naturally to digest meat. And I wont go on saying that vegetarianism is great just because I used to have a huge collection of Pamela Anderson wallpapers :)

I just dont really care what people eat. And I dont judge anyone by their food habits. Why dont I meet more people who match my "food sensibility"?

Cheque please!