No different from us

As a young graduate, my world was still my college buddies. With our newly acquired power to earn, we’d hang out on weekends. Mostly, at restaurants like ‘Pop Tates’ or any place that served good food and had a soothing ambience. The requirement was that it would be a public place. Why public? Cos that’s where we’d look cool! This was way before the day of selfies and Instagram. If it wasn’t seen, it never happened.

When it came to food habits, we all relished the animal flesh on our plates. Of course, the quantity that we could stomach differed. The variety of species that we each could consume in one meal, differed too. I was no champion in comparison to my pals. Though, I did enjoy a moderate portion of dead flesh, every now and then. My favourite prey was dead hen and dead fish. So I can’t take pride in my predatory skills as the prey always arrived dead, skinned/scaled, chopped up or shredded, marinated and barbecued, steamed or sometimes fried.

‘Chicken,’ is what we call a dead hen. It has always been my ‘comfort food.’ Not very comforting for the hen though. Interestingly, we seem to have forgotten that ‘chicken’ is the word used to describe a hen’s baby. It’s almost like we make dead hen sound cute by referring to it as ‘chicken.’

I never had a pet. However, my friends had different kinds of pets. This qualified them as animal lovers. Yet, when we ordered, there would be different species of animal flesh in each course. I could never stomach this variety, too well. More importantly, I couldn’t stomach the fact that my friends loved and nurtured a certain species of animals, while they voraciously consumed other species.

It’s easier to see things in others than oneself. Finally, I realised that instead of bothering about them, I should be focused on myself. It took me nothing less than a decade to turn my lens inward. During this decade, various events and incidents had occurred. One of my sister’s became a vegetarian. She was always sensitive to the plight of animals being tortured or in pain. Later, our father switched to vegetarianism for health reasons. This led my mom to stop cooking animal flesh at home. This was something rather unheard of in our religious community. I wondered, when did one’s food habits start getting associated with religion? 

When someone known to us, changes their way of living, the act in itself, begins to question our way. It questions our sense of identity. We feel threatened. Some discomfort arises from seeing this change, even if it’s within another person. Even more, when it’s in an area that we know requires change but would rather not…often for our own comfort and convenience.

These events further led me to question the food habits I was raised with. I often wondered how I could feel sad for the animals that are caged and slaughtered and yet crave a chicken burger and also relish it. We have been raised to think that this is ok and acceptable. Animals do not share the same rights as humans. This obviously has been determined by humans. History is filled with stories about how we have fought for our own rights. The sacrifices made, the wars we have witnessed, the different kinds of rebellion and movements that have taken place. Yet we deny the same rights to other creatures, for our own convenience.

There is no real need to take a life, for a meal. We don’t go to restaurants or markets and look for a hen that we will slaughter and then slaughter it ourselves. Instead, we look at a creative name on a menu and tell the waiter to get us that preparation. When it arrives on our plate, at our table, it does not arrive screaming or teary-eyed or bleeding. It arrives in a manner that it’s easy to eat with a fork and knife or sometimes even as finger-food. Just imagine, an entire body sliced and diced as finger food, just for us.

This creature was manufactured and raised to be killed and served on our plates. No choice, no freedom, no escape. It can’t do a thing but go through the motions of a painful and unhealthy life that’s already been defined for it, by us.

Yes, we’re all responsible for this. We’re blindfolded by businesses that want to sell us their products. An animal, a creature is just an end product to them. I am responsible for this. While I struggle with the consequences of my food habits, even if I do go vegetarian, I will still end up consuming milk and other animal products. Even these are reasons for their enslavement.

The consciousness is shifting and we are waking up to these sensitivities. We co-exist with other creatures. But we no longer co-exist in peace. They are leading painful lives due to animal farming practices which are carried out on a large scale. Imagine standing in one spot all your life. It’s like a life long imprisonment. Now imagine standing in one spot all your life, right from the moment you were born. It’s like a life long imprisonment sentence being passed even before you are born.

We are compassionate. Not many of us would yield this kind of cruelty ourselves, nor wish for it on another being. Then why do we continue to wear our blinkers and act like this is not happening? Why do we continue to sit in our fancy houses, restaurants and pretend that this torture and cruelty doesn’t exist? Are we even aware? With so much of information explosion, why is information about animal cruelty not reaching us, as frequently as other trending topics? Businesses will run losses and even shut down if we were to wake up to a compassionate world and a healthier one for us. Commercial gain is not everything. Life is!

We have all felt the loss of a loved one. No amount of money or prayers have brought that life back. A life once gone, is lost. What justifies us to place a lower value on animal life? Can we not see a reflection of ourselves in their eyes? Can we not see the struggle of another creature that inhabits this planet? Another creature that is no different from us.