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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!

Comments

Anonymous said…
:D Is your little tidbit about jelly true??? If so, that's one more item off my list of 'I like this' kind of foods . . .
Anonymous said…
HAHA!!

Really that was really fun-funny
You remind of times when I didn't eat any fruit with seeds [like oranges], because I have sure that while sleeping a tree will start growing and after a few days I will have branches from my ears/eyes etcs!

This is fair deal.. but think of going on luncheons and hear the SAME story all the time. The head of my department has this very nasty habit of repeating the stories of his younger time.. I mat have heard it 10s of times. But how do I ask him to stop?
Anonymous said…
I tried chicken for the first time when I was doing in my Engineering, and I really had the same experience..the whole night I felt like a 'kooli' wandering aimlessly in my stomach!!...
Anyways..now I don't have that problem..but I have another...I eat only chicken ,that to in one perticular restaurent here..and that to only boneless..:-)) and I don't even want to try anything else..now ppl ask why don't you eat fish..that this..when you can eat chicken....now thats a bit hard for me to explain..;-)
Bit Hawk said…
@anonymous
Sorry for misleading you :D I just said "even if it did"...so keep eating :)

@veens
I pity you! Listening to your boss' stories 10s of times! You must be a brave person to go so often to lunches with boring bosses :))

@pavan
Seriously, people should give more respect to others with different food sensibilities...
Anonymous said…
LOL...seriosuly never thought those questions were *that* annoying, until I read this post :) It truly is.....

The worst one for me.....my answer to the "Do you eat eggs" was a "No" and then the next one turned out to be "Do you at least eat betel leaves?"...and to their horror, my answer was again a abig "No"!!!

Pamela Anderson, huh? I am convicned I am a better vegetarian...my wall papers were all Aishwarya Rai :)
Vetirmagal said…
At last I hear someone echoing my thoughts on food sensibility.

You are not alone.. :-)

I have been having such experiences all the time in my life for the past 30 odd years!. I married a stuanch non-veggie , and mix in the social circles of non-vegetarians. But my own veggie clans too have wink-wink digs at me for preferring to cook non-veg for my family. So both sides lost for me and I too feel alone on many occassions.

I feel we are too bothered about what other people eat and want to impose our choices on the other side.

One veggie friend of mine keeps nagging me to ask my family to stop eating non-veg.."why they eat dead things" blah blah..
Vetirmagal said…
At last I hear someone echoing my thoughts on food sensibility.

You are not alone.. :-)

I have been having such experiences all the time in my life for the past 30 odd years!. I married a stuanch non-veggie , and mix in the social circles of non-vegetarians. But my own veggie clans too have wink-wink digs at me for preferring to cook non-veg for my family. So both sides lost for me and I too feel alone on many occassions.

I feel we are too bothered about what other people eat and want to impose our choices on the other side.

One veggie friend of mine keeps nagging me to ask my family to stop eating non-veg.."why they eat dead things" blah blah..

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