At coffee break this morning I saw Amal at the coffee shop helping herself to several pieces of sandwich and kossum bread ( a kind of soft bread like croissants)…. a plateful of them. As I complimented her for her voracious appetite, Jerry, our coffee room in-charge started laughing. He said Amal was his best customer. She took almost half of all the stuff he had for sale, he said.
Amal offered me a piece of meat filled sandwich knowing very well that I was a vegetarian and wouldn’t eat it. She is very clever. When I said “No, thank you”, as I have done in the past, she asked me “Mr. Raman, why don’t you eat meat?”
I said, “Who said that I didn’t? I do eat meat.”
“Then why don’t you accept this sandwich”, Amal asked.
“Oh! I don’t eat this kind.” I replied.
“What kind do you eat?”
I said “Well, I eat the meat from plants.”
“What plants?”
“You know, plants like spinach, lettuce, tomato, potato, carrot, orange, apple. There are plenty to feed me”
“Oh! Mr. Raman, come on. These are vegetables and fruits. You can’t call them meat.”
“What is meat?” I questioned.
“Meat is the flesh of animals like cow and sheep, camel and rabbit”, Amal responded.
“That is animal meat. What I mentioned are plant meats.”
“So if you can eat plant meat why can’t you eat animal meat?”
I asked her, “Please permit me to ask you a difficult question. This is not to offend you but to just make a point of discussion.”
“Go ahead”, she said.
“Tell me, if you can eat animal meat, why can’t you eat human meat?”
“What?!”
“Human meat ... the flesh from human body?”
“You don’t think that I am a cannibal do you?”
“Well, I don’t”, I said, “But just as it puts you off even to think about it, animal flesh is something which cannot find passage through my throat.”
“Oh, Mr. Raman, you are too complicated”, Amal said.
“Amal, I am not complicated. Don’t be afraid to face logic. You don’t have to believe in what I say or agree with my point of view. Just try to understand that a person’s food is personal, just like your thoughts and feelings. Anyway, thanks for offering the sandwich. Someday I hope that you will offer cakes, cookies or chocolates which I relish. I will readily accept them.”
A few days after that encounter Amal brought me a plateful of cookies, homemade and delicious. I asked her what was the occasion and without waiting for her answer I said “Happy birthday to you!”.
She said it was not her birthday. She had mentioned to her mother about a peculiar Indian who doesn’t eat animals and is surviving only on cabbages and carrots. Her mother was not surprised. She had heard of such creatures and even met some. She developed a soft corner for me and sent some cookies to keep me alive.
