Bacon-Flavoured Soya Bits

In Which is is Revealed that Anyone (Even A Punjabi Who Likes Shiny Things) Is Capable of Change.

I had my first Bacon Lettuce and Tomato sandwich while visiting my sister at Bryn Mawr College, PA, where I also saw two bald women in trench coats walking a pig on a leash. By Std. 11, awash in the ideals of a second-hand all-American undergraduate liberal arts education, I had asked the principal at my school back home in Bombay if we could skip the vivisecting of frogs since the ecosystem would collapse without them. I was told I most certainly could, and along with, pass up 20 of 100 marks on my final ISC Biology score. On the day of the board exam I was presented with a rat, which was at least, I consoled myself, 'a pest'. Someone else got a pregnant rat with a pretty row of perfect little tiny baby rats inside her.

At eighteen I met a young American Greenpeace activist fresh off the Rainbow Warrior docked at Bhaucha Dhakka. His long blonde hair glistened in its ponytail. He asked me about the bangles I wore from wrist to elbow and I told him about the market in Colaba and the street-side silver shop where I had had my nose, ears, and belly button pierced with gold wire - because I was cool like that. He said he'd pass because his girlfriend would never wear jewellery that required (I paraphrase) earth-rape to procure, and would I possibly know where he could find pottery or wooden beads for his gift of love instead?

Here is a poem entitled 'Teaspoon' that I wrote some time after this encounter:

"It’s a Punjabi thing -

We like shiny stuff.

But as I’ve discovered,

Cutlery shines too,

In the right light.

Plus, forks are not responsible

For grizzly deaths in Africa

Or the rape of the earth in general,

Nor are they the preferred currency

Of evil enterprise everywhere.

Maybe I don’t know what I am talking about,

But I may wear a teaspoon to tea today.

There is such beauty in utility."

When I met the Greenpeace ponytail guy, I was already vegetarian. At age eight I had seen crabs being boiled alive on a visit to Gorai beach where we would spend many family weekends. One of them had clambered over his buddies, jumped out of the pot, and made a run for it clattering across the kitchen floor. Someone chased him down and put him back in the pot. When I was eleven and at camp in Dachigam, Kashmir, I was given the circle of life talk after a friend and I had been devastated that the chickens we had befriended were to be eaten at dinner. During the summer I turned sixteen, I watched video footage on loop of the Deonar Abattoir courtesy a People for Animals charity sale at The Jehangir Art Gallery.

To make a long story short, gone now was the beloved chilli chicken, chicken frankie rolls, butter chicken, fish fingers, and open hot beef sandwiches of my childhood. In 2000 PETA burst into India and Pamela Anderson, dressed in nothing but lettuce leaves was asking me to be 'consistent with my compassion'. Dairy, leather, honey, silk had to go too, because animals were not 'ours to eat, wear, experiment on or use for entertainment'. This made sense. My dog was my brother. I had wept into his ruff more times than I can remember. How could I love animals and also wear their skins on my feet?

At 20 I read Peter Singer much as a communist must consume Marx: with reverence and conviction, waiting for The Revolution (which surely was nigh?). I smiled politely when people felt sorry for the poor choices that I had at the buffet. I smiled politely at jokes about vegetarians being plant-haters. In 1997 at the University of York, away from home and with no cooking skills, I ate 'bacon flavoured soya bits' and Linda McCartney's weird processed plant protein 'fillets'. Thankfully they had fresh vegetarian and vegan options at one of the cafeterias on campus and I knew how to chop a salad.

At 23, back home with an MA in Fiction that equipped me for not a lot, work-wise, I landed my first job at a literary website where I was the oldest of 10 employees. The internet had just exploded onto the scene. I connected with like-mindeds at the touch of a keyboard. I was no longer alone in this cruel world! This is when I first attempted a 'compassionate' lifestyle. A year of black coffee, cheese-less pizzas and vada paos later, with no revenue model, the website folded (as everyone said it would) and I did too. I had a cold that wouldn't leave. I was unhappy and unfit from the effect of an insanely unhealthy diet. And I really missed chocolate. For the next twenty years I drifted along in the 'ovo-lacto' zone. I admired vegans from afar and avoided them entirely, secretly going a week or two at a time dairy-free.

In 2008, being able to gestate a child and watch him grow for six months straight only on the milk I produced in my body changed me. Because cows seem no different from me or any other mammal neurologically speaking, I could imagine quite clearly what must go on at dairy farms. But like the good people of Nazi Deutschland, I looked away. Because, well, I was allowed. Society allowed me, nay it encouraged me! Life is short, eat dessert first. I was tired. I had to pick my battles. And let's face it, gelato.

2020 changed all that though. I can't look away any longer. We have known for a very long time that the problem with the meat and dairy industry is not only the horrific lives and deaths of the animals. It is about climate change and global ecological collapse. It is about human health. It is about the right not to have to live on a toxic planet. It is about The Rich getting sick while simultaneously starving The Poor.

We know that the earth cannot support 10 billion meat and dairy consumers. We know that 70% of antibiotics produced are used preventively in the feed of domestic animals to keep them alive in filthy conditions. We know that this is the reason they don't work so well on us anymore. We also know that Mad Cow Disease, Bird Flu, Swine Flu, (Covid 19?) and pretty much all other zoonotic diseases that we suffer from - are caused / compounded by habitat destruction for our culinary preferences.

Our. Culinary. Preferences.

So, no. This is not about 'offending peoples cultural sensibilities'. This is not about Beef and Pork. Or Hindus and Muslims. Or Christians and Jews. Or Parsis and Buddhists. This is Beyond God. This is about Cows and Pigs. This is about Goats and Sheep. This is about Lab Leaks and Wet Markets. This above all, is about humanity being overthrown by Chicken.

Eat more plants. Eat less meat and dairy. Governments and businesses will follow. Because Mary had a little lamb, and she is called 'How You Spend Your Money'.

"We are living on the planet of the chickens. The broiler (meat) chicken now outweighs all wild birds put together by three to one. It is the most numerous vertebrate (not just bird) species on land, with 23 billion alive at any one time. Across the world, chicken is the most commonly eaten meat. This has made it a vivid symbol of the Anthropocene – the proposed new geological epoch that marks the overwhelming impact of humans on the Earth’s surface geological processes. The modern bird is now so changed from its ancestors, that it's distinctive bones will undoubtedly become fossilised markers of the time when humans reigned the planet." The Conversation

“Just how destructive does a culinary preference have to be before we decide to eat something else? And if you are tempted to put off these questions of conscience, to say not now, then when?” ― Jonathan Safran Foer, Eating Animals

Watch OKJA

Read EATING ANIMALS , ANIMAL LIBERATION, SPILLOVER.