Why am I a Vegetarian?

I am a vegetarian for many reasons. I am one of the people who come in the 5-7% range of all the vegetarians that exists in the world. So that way, I do fall in a wonderful category of a minority! Well, past 7 years I am away from my hometown into different Indian cities & I must proudly say that I have been learning the art of respecting other people’s choice for their diet & to settle with the fact that I could not impose my thoughts onto other’s parking. It is that part which is unethical. Mine and your worlds are different. The grass is green on both sides.

As a fresher, when I stepped out of my parent’s den into the real world, I would say that I had many prejudices pre-set in my mind. I remember to avoid sitting with the batch mates in the mess during the initial week just to show off that I don't eat nonveg and it is impure to do so. It was a hypocrite behavior. I am grateful that I came into my senses quite early noticing the fact that it is disrespectful to let anyone know that their choice of dietary is abhorred by someone or to say any of the choices that they are making. It is obviously demotivating and disrespectful. Until this time I was avoiding eating non-veg because of my family background. I am born in a Brahmin family. So my senses were tied to not eat nonveg because my family & my parents would not be liking it or maybe God would not like it and they see us and we may be cursed to hell.

There is some element in my mind, my soul and my body which altogether repel meat eating. So many things are responsible for this. During the school days, while commuting for the school in the school-bus or rickshaw, I  used to come across a patch of commercial chicken shops. It was nearby the railway gate. At times it used to be closed since the train was passing or about to pass. So it has happened one day that in a long traffic hour I concentrated in the slaughtering of a chicken. I saw how it was taken out of the cage upside down, picked by her legs. I saw how her legs were tied first & then the head was cut, later her skin is peeled off and so on while all the time the chicken tried frivolously to ran away. It was shocking to me as a child and I have not seen something so violent in my entire little age. That event sat in my mind and all the time I encounter someone eating meat, the vision of those bloody moments came crossing like a violent fire. I started to question myself what makes us so authoritative over these little helpless beings that we could cage them and monitor their life, their death and sell them in the market. It is no exaggeration to believe and think about that these too have families and these too have feelings. They can feel pain. They can be depressed and feel loneliness in their own world. These thoughts are too much for me and I have got no answer around. I understand that this is to maintain the food chain in the ecosystem. I understand that this is to gratify our taste for the great food these creatures provide us (for the most part I came across asking people why they eat meat is that their gratification for taste and not the non-availability of vegetarian food).

Can we not provide them with anesthesia so that they can die a peaceful death. How are we so inhuman that the way they are treated reflects that we are not a bit grateful to them. Come on, we are killing them & still no mercy? You know what, we cremate ourselves or do all the pompom around when we die. On the other hand, this hostility towards the animals shows so much hypocrisy in our part. We have stopped introspecting about it because we do not want to come out of our comfort zones. This is one-sided violence. This is authoritative. This is uncool of us & we need to do something for this.

Do we have an equal society? If yes, it does apply to the weaker and the stronger sections equally. To be selfish is to put a bird in a cage against her will, for your entertainment and fulfilling the demand of your lavish lifestyle. Life is about expressions and true expression comes from the freedom and liberty of all kinds. As the internet comes sliding down to my life I became fond of surfing through many sites. I learned how the food industries are becoming expressionless at one point, how do they process food from beginning to the end, how the killing of innocent creatures takes place, how all the animals are flocked together and the pain is immense apart from the profit that we make from it. This is justice not done and I am sorry for this that I could not do & we as a humanity have severely failed our beloved nature. I am a vegetarian because I don’t feel I have any kind of right as an individual as my identity to the right of killing a living creature because I like its meat and we, the most intelligent creatures have the power to dictate to them or to mobilize them against their will, I could not digest this fact as a conscious human being. I don’t want to do this and I am happier this way, hence I am a vegetarian. I am a vegetarian as a small symbol in my small group of people around me to signify and pass on the message for those who want to grasp, that something is wrong, someone is exploited & before the meat at your table has been served, someone has screamed her stomach out with blood all around and in her mind the memory of suppression. This can be a small protest.

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