Days whiz past my memory. Too many varieties of rice on the plate.
Much of this week has been a digital prison. Seeing the protests in Jantar Mantar, hearing of them, through friends, through twitter, through real time reporting. I have not been able to contribute in time, resources or work and it makes me feel small. This has been an unforeseen movement in time, there is hope in the air. I write about it in this post: Post resignation: Thousands of people listen to a student from the North-East, Rohith Vemula’s love letter and more
I have begun reading “ants among elephants” by Sujatha Gidla. It is a recounting of a family’s experience of caste, untouchability, life, education, revolution in Andhra and Telangana. It narrates experiences of Operation Polo when the Indian Government sent troops into the Nizam’s Dominion. It narrated how dissent was suppressed both in the period of the Nizam and during the period of military rule that followed.
I went to Thirunallar, Trichy and a few other places nearby as part of a very hastily planned family trip to temples. It appears for a few reasons that my father has found non-hesitance to god after all these years.
- S gifts me a fountain pen, the Advocate, from the Deccan Pen Store. It might bring me to diligently write more - I hope. I have been enjoying the ink capacity, and the size of it.
It seems a lot of conversations about veganism arrive at visceral, simple, complex taste. My caste, class and cultural identity matters. When I meet people outside of bangalore, I receive all kinds of comments. Some secretly wonder if I am brahmin, where I explain I come from a family and caste that eat meat. Some wonder how is milking cruel, the questioner knows that cows have to be impregnated, or sometimes, the city-brain has never learnt that cows have to be constantly pregnant to give milk. Some say they grow their chickens in their village with love, in open spaces. Would I eat then - the chicken they butchered after having loved it…
I have been asked why I treat it as a question of elevated morality, do you think you are better than others is the question that is in people’s minds really. I do not think so. I think I am privileged to make certain choices. This privilege with food, I will continue to exercise. I do believe life should not be in a jail. Does that mean you can eat life that did not live itself out in a jail? It is a complicated thought, however I will still not eat it.
I recognise that I maybe nutritionally starving myself. But then I have improved with my nutrition profile. I am okay with experimenting with my health, perhaps for the worse. I believe that is better than caging life.