Struggles of becoming a vegetarian.

I come from a middle class family and I speak broken english, which is also why I want to take the time and space to explain to the people out there who doesn’t know that 'Vegan' and 'Vegetarian' are two different things!

Vegans are the kind hearted people who don’t eat anything that comes from an animal just so they don’t harm them. Vegetarians on the other hand are of different types: lacto-ovo, lacto, ovo, and pesco(those people are the ones who like to be called vegetarians but don’t deserve to be called vegetarian).
Most people whom I’ve come across who don’t eat meat are either Brahmins, or really fat and chose to go on a diet for a lifetime, or in my case is allergic to meat and eggs.

I pay my respect to anyone out there who used to eat meat and chose to be 'Vegan' because they were concerned about harming other living beings on the planet. Because as far as I know, rejecting a delicious meal just for the sake of someone else’s welfare is harder than waiting for Satan in your deathbed.

You see, I’m still struggling so much not to eat meat so that I won’t have an allergic reaction. And when I say allergic reaction from food most people think it’s diarrhoea. Trust me I’d poop liquid my whole life if I can eat something that’s good for my tongue.

I had my first allergic reaction from chicken when I was 12. One of my best friend’s mom used to make the best Malabar Chicken biriyani I’ve ever had (yes I ate chicken even after realising I was allergic because that is how much I love food and I’d cheat on my whole body just to have an intimate relationship with my tongue). It was horrible. My eyes were purple and were the size of a gulab jamun, and it was painful and I was half blind for a week.
But still I kept eating her biriyani whenever she brought it to class because that how freaking delicious it was and it is totally worth the pain:’).

Then I realised I was allergic to eggs when I started developing painful pimples (oh no it was not just my face). It’s like having chicken pox only it doesn’t have a cure.

To the people who stop eating "oil containing food" (which also includes eggs) just so they don’t have pimples and can have a clear skin, I just wanna say : fuck you. Because, it’s torturing yourself. You see the food and you for sure know how it tastes like and you sure as hell want to take a bite, but you still don’t wanna have it so that you can have a "clear skin" -_-.

My reasons for not eating fish is kind of funny and terrifying at the same time. My dad once took me and my brother to that place in Kollam (I don’t remember what it is called) which is basically a fish market but only the size of two football grounds put together. He thought it’d be cool for us to see what different kinds of sea foods looks like before cooked and right after they are caught from the sea. But let me tell you this, that’s the first time I cried in public which was not because of a heartbreak. It was so horrible. OMG! Even when I think about it, it makes me wanna throw up. Don’t get me wrong it’s not because I can’t resist dead bodies which taste great after being cooked. I’ve not been uncomfortable once while watching 'The Saw' or 'Final Destination '. Yeah I’m just dead inside :). It was this pile of water which looks like it came from a sewage drain and all the fish were put together in piles (like a huge hump on the road) in the bare sewage water!! OMG I couldn’t believe I was eating fish fries which came from this place. I cried so bad that people thought someone had assaulted me. Let me tell you this one more time. It’s not the dead fish but it’s surroundings that made me cry. And ever since then when I see cooked fish I remember the horrible sewage water where they lied before they came to the fish market.

Now when it comes to beef I have a moral reason not to eat them. You see, after we reach age 3 or 4 we no longer feed on our mom’s milk but on cow’s. So for me I respect cow’s as much as I respect my mom (well not the same but you get the idea). All my friends who are not vegetarian if asked what is your favourite combination of food they’ll say 'Porotta and beef roast’. And I’ve been made fun of for not eating beef and been called 'Sangi' more times than I can count. Everytime someone offer me beef roast or something made out of it and I reject it, like a reflex reaction they spit those words out "Sangi analle". Because obviously I used to eat chicken and mutton so why not beef?! And don’t even get me started with the people who say " it’s not cow meat it’s buffalo meat" -_-. You tell me that you were born from only an egg and not a sperm I would try eating beef. (Well still I’m not gonna eat it but you know what I mean). I’ve had an incident where my friend offered me a chicken cudlet (and I ate it for sure) and later she told me it was beef and actually made jokes about it like “ You haven’t had beef in your whole life? You enjoyed the cudlet I gave you) . OMG I can’t even tell you how mad I was at her and how terrible I felt about having eaten it. She thought it was funny and maybe it was but not for me.

Now that I’ve been quarentined for almost three months, I’ve been quite successful in controlling myself from eating meat. But still there’s the torture that comes from my family because obviously my dad and brother still eats meat. And to my friends who sent me the pictures of home made chicken pizza or chicken biriyani - hell is filled with people like you. Because that’s how hard it is for me to reject a delicious meal.

If you want to torment someone or blackmail someone who’s at the verge of being a vegetarian, just eat chicken biriyani in front of them.