Food For Thought

One day, I saw two tiny, fair-skinned piglets running ahead of my car and thought: ‘By god! They really can sprint. They’re super-fast!’ They scuttled into a by-lane and I turned into my apartment complex and forgot about them.

 

 A couple of evenings later while returning home, I saw a woman walking her pigs. I stopped the car and approached them, wanting to take some photos. It was the stick in her hand and the way she was hovering in their vicinity that made me ask if the pigs belonged to her. Her name was Jennifer and I learned that she is a neighbour of mine. Lives in the same Wado or village.

 

 

Jennifer’s affirmative answer led to a conversation about them. I asked if she reared them, if she had a pig farm. She said she just had these two pigs – one male and the other female. She added that the sow, which is three or four years old, and had given birth to seven piglets, two of whom were on the street as we spoke,  would soon be meat which she would sell. The male, their father, was not quite a year old and the piglets were just two months old. I asked if she named them. Very matter-of-factly, in the most deadpan manner I’d ever seen, she uttered, “No”.

 

 

I have to admit that something turned in my stomach. I was now acquainted with this sow, with her drooping udders and hungry snorting, who would soon be inside Jennifer’s stomach and, who knows, even mine! The next time I have a hankering for bacon and eggs, I’ll be unable to eat, wanting to know whose pig it was, whether we have met or not. I was confused by the encounter and started probing my own food choices. But, taking my cue from Jennifer’s matter-of-factness, I clicked my photos and drove on home. 

 

 

I didn’t have far to go, but it wasn’t a comfortable ride home. I had questions. I needed to understand my own dietary choices. Re-think them, yet again. But this time with a whole new set of ideas and ethics.

 

Alighting from my car, walking towards the gate, I met a neighbour and we decided to drive down to Morjhim Beach for a quick walk. On the way there, I narrated this pig incident. He mentioned seeing her walking them every day and, like me, couldn’t  fathom how people did it -- rear them and then kill them. He said that he was grateful, for these very reasons, that he didn’t eat pork and chicken. My immediate neighbours, who don’t live in the Riviera complex but with whom we share a common boundary wall, raise chickens, who crow at the crack of dawn and often drop in for a wander in the Sapphire gardens. I’ve never asked but now assume that they probably eat them at some point too. I assume they farm the eggs for personal consumption because when they are particularly noisy, which is at relatively frequent intervals, my maid remarks that they must be laying eggs today.

 

 

It seems standard practice in these parts, in the relative rural environs of Goa, to rear the meat and eat it. Jennifer’s pigs are fed from the stuff she and her husband collect from hotel left-overs and their walk through the lanes of Bammon Wado, where we live, foraging for food. My maid who also lives in the same village revealed that these pigs are expensive to rear and that her family also used to breed and sell pigs when they were ready to eat. She stated, as an aside, that Jennifer was quite indiscriminate with regard to where her pigs fed. Often desecrating the gardens of her neighbours and inviting much wrath, but that she is aggressive and continues without care.  When Jennifer and her family cut a pig, they do so at home, themselves, and sell it on Wednesdays at the Siolim Parish Bazaar. A social acquaintance, someone I’ve only recently met, declared that this was probably the best meat to buy as it is fresh. But I would rather go into a store and pick up something I hadn’t seen alive and made acquaintance with. I’m squeamish about this whole idea of knowing the being I am eating, however brief the acquaintance. 

 

 

 

I’ve grown up on a non-vegetarian diet. There were no restrictions on what we ate except beef but even that was overcome while I studied in London primarily because, in the hostel I stayed in, not eating beef meant I would get an omelette on an average of three to four times a week. I’d complain and Linda Washington, a cynical fellow hosteller, fed up with the frequent groans, goaded me to try it,  insisting it was the Jersey cow therefore my devout grandmother, a Krishna bhakt, would have no qualms. Through her taunts, I interrogated my belief and realised that I didn’t know why we revered the cow and when I didn’t find adequate answers elsewhere, I decided to give it a try.  It was okay then but I no longer eat it as I find it very heavy to digest. But that is a personal choice and not because it is taboo or from any other inhibiting factors.

 

Aside from this, I eat pretty much everything, even though the preference at home is to be mostly vegetarian.  But because of my rather involved yoga, meditation and healing practice, I often face the query: “You still eat meat?” And to this, I’ve never had qualms in responding that indeed I do because a wise man once told me that I must learn to ‘manage’ all kinds of energy. And that is what I do. Depending on my engagement with the world, whether it is a lot of external doing and less contemplation for the day or week, or the other way around, my food is based on the kind of energy that I need. And this includes regular fasting too.

 

That very day, when I met Jennifer walking her pigs,  a friend shared, on our school WhatsApp group, an incident of how Asha Bhonsle, who had acute lower spinal cord pain and couldn’t bend, was at the Golden Temple in Amritsar, where she prayed to be healed. She was instantly cured of her ailment, for right there and then, is said to have bent down spontaneously.  Ideas of faith and miracles did the rounds in the group, but while Faith is indeed part of it, the purity of energy plays a huge role. As a healer, I am familiar with how relevant it is that there is this element which must be present in the asking, the receiver and also of the environment the healing is asked in. Here the humility of Asha in pain, and the sacredness with which people visiting the golden temple imbue its sanctorum, created the perfect synergy.

 

 

However, there is a tendency to believe that the human being who doesn’t eat meat is purer than those who do. The Sikhs are known to be ardent meat eaters and many I know can’t go without their daily dose of tandoori chicken. Yet their temple precincts, as per this story, were the epitome of pure energy. And within the context of our conversation, my neighbour who doesn’t eat chicken and pork but chooses to be fish-eggetarian, was stumped by this anecdote because like many others he too believes that there is an element of purity in his diet, which isn’t possible in those who are heavy meat eaters. The issue of purity is another one altogether and a discussion for another occasion, but it is pertinent to ask ourselves what we mean by it in the first place. To my mind, purity simply is the honesty of intent, without rancour or guilt. An unconditional, non-judgemental, reverential acceptance of one’s being, its needs and desires, which creates a sacred connect with the divine forces of being. A sublime state that is dependent on integrity and faith -- not meat or fish or vegetables -- but one’s energetic capacity achieved through it or despite it.

 

Therefore the discipline lies not in my diet, but in administrating it. However, despite the lack of inhibition regarding meat in my diet, the dilemma of eating what is reared to kill creates another kind of question, adding a whole new twist to the very concept of eating compounded by the numerous popular diets doing the rounds which make eating itself a big issue. One diet recommends you eat according your blood type. Because I’m O+ and this is supposedly the oldest blood type, from an era where there was hunting but no farming, the genetic type of O+ accepts meat but wheat is taboo.

 

I recall, when I was around 10-12 years old and shikaar was still legal, relishing the teetar and bataer my maternal uncle would share with us, from his catch. We’ve also watched him fish in the rivers in Kashmir and eaten freshly caught trout. One no longer hunts for food so rearing and slaughtering the animals is the way things are done today, because killing is the only way that we do eat the meat.  Many friends speak of the idea behind eating fish as being less cruel in the kill -- but is it?  I do wonder because the oysters and clams are picked off the rocks they have adhered to in order to protect their spawn from drowning or getting swept with the tide. There are fisheries that rear prawns. And, how is putting out a net to catch  live and struggling fish any less violent than putting a knife to a pig’s throat?

 

Recent research also reveals that when we eat plants and fruits that have seeds, the plant poison secreted to protect the seed (which the plant deems essential for procreation and therefore aids survival of its species) can be harmful to ingest. Over time, this substance is believed to create a residue of poison in the stomach lining. And this is being linked to various stomach disorders and diseases that plague our generation. All this does make one have to think about the ethics of what we call food, doesn’t it? And also the systems of eating.

 

It’s no longer possible to take the traditional food-chain for granted and unquestioningly sing along with the popular 19th century jingle “To market, to market, to buy a fat pig. Home again, home again, jiggety-jig.” Animal activism has brought in a whole new dimension to food ethics which makes food and eating a rather perplexing issue.

 

 

I have a couple of favourite stories culled from traditional lore that speak of issues of natural selection and citing that it’s all the same matter whose form is a manifestation of the mind. Swami Ram, in  his travels with the Himalayan Masters, wrote of an interesting experience of meeting with a famed Aghori Baba. The Baba, on seeing how hungry Swami Ram and the Pandits accompanying him were, suggested they cut and bring the remains of a dead body lying on the river bank below while he got a fire going. The astonished threesome was stunned but compelled by some inexplicable force to do as he asked. The Baba then turned what could have been a cannibalistic act for staunch vegetarians, shattering their dharma, into a delightfully illuminating narrative on the question of energy which pervades all matter. He turned the bones into tasty rasagullas, highlighting the idea that we are all made of the same energy, in differing degrees of density, and it is a question of realising this and turning it into  whatever one chooses or needs. Aghori Baba was a self-realised master who was able to convert even the dense energetic matter of human bones into a vegetarian sweet dish - a feat that most of us cannot achieve. However, another way of looking at this reiterates the discernment, as mentioned earlier, of managing energy according to one’s needs.

 

Smiling Aghori Baba with long hair,
 ash on face wearing human bones
,rudraksha bead

 

 In another story, this time about Shiv Nag the cobra and the irrepressible Narada Muni of yore, tells us how the snake that eschews the natural order of things in learning to meditate and become a yogi creates havocs in the fields. This causes the rats to urge the cobra to return to foraging their kin because absence of the natural survival of the fittest and fastest was leading to an unprecedented rise in rodent population and to farmers losing their crops. Inspired by Narada and his wisdom, the Nag eschewed his otherwise violent stinging of children who trampled the temple precincts that the King cobra and his family lived in.  Unafraid of this now measly snake, the once cowering kids took to throwing stones at the pliant reptile, compelling Narada Muni, who visited him a year after the sermon, to say, “I didn’t tell you not to hiss!” There is also the much quoted logic of Krishna at the cusp of the mother of all battles when he says that the world is nothing but an illusion, echoing the mastery that Aghori Baba is said to have displayed.  Nothing exists  - not the killer nor killed -- but dharma must prevail.

 

 My question is: what’s the dharma in this instance? To my mind, it raises a similar dilemma: to eat or not to eat, or what to eat. So, if the human dharma is our own survival, which does necessitate some intake of food, is there any other ethic that must be involved in our decision making? Other than eating what we need as we need it? Eating for survival and not greed, managing the energy according to necessity, is that the mantra we should apply?

Through the Neighbourhood, Walking the Rain

 

Wet rain, dripping rain, non-stop drizzling, pouring rain. This is just the start of the monsoon in Goa, This June it is early, it is heavier than expected, but everyone I meet has something contrary to say. I have only the experience of the previous year and remember that it was hardly spectacular. And this, what I have been witnessing over the last couple of weeks and especially these past few daysy, has been very heavy rain. This wetness, the cold breeze and constant pitter-patter make me restive.  I just cannot stay indoors. I had heaps of work to do today and did want to be disciplined about it. I had been on a wonderful, long wet walk, yesterday evening and said to myself, fun is okay some of the time, lets get down to some work, and I did, but barely. Come 5pm, all that control got to me,  I had to get out.  I put on my raincoat, wore my sturdy all-weather Bata sandals, and off I went.

 

 

It has been raining all day long, more or less, since Monday. And between yesterday and this morning the Meteorological department has recorded 124 centimetres of rain, which is termed as ‘heavy rain’. I wonder what they will say of the kind of rain today and how much it would be in  terms of inches or centimetres of rainfall. It has to be tons more than the previous day's 124 centimetres. For  there was absolutely no lull whatsoever. It just poured and poured and poured – just poured. Pure unadulterated showers of drenching, snivelling, shushing rain  that has silenced the neighbourhood to a slithering hush  - of water finding her path through foliage, mud, rocks and drains. Amid the whoosh of the breeze slipping in and out of the leaves of trees.

 

 

I have rather noisy Goans, for neighbours. It’s just their way, they speak loudly and seem to work out of doors most of the time. And in the rain, quite naturally they are not heard because they are mostly indoors. But what surprises me is that the birds are also silent. It is only when the rain begins to peter out, when it is less than the occasional drizzle that, usually a crow will kaw-kaw first and another will respond. And a brief exclusive crow-dialogue will ensue. Until the hens join them and then as if an afterthought the Koel will let out one long call and then the twittering and chirping chorus of many others follows suit. But not for long, the moment the rain begins her heaving whispers, everything else becomes silent. I like to call it the silence of rain.

 

 

Today was a kind of tense day to begin with. My sister messaged to say that Mummy had gone to the hospital for a routine check-up but her blood pressure was extremely low, so the doctor decided to keep her under observation and do some tests. It was worrying and thankfully by the end of the day they discharged her as all was under control. She completes 86 years of age tomorrow, the 21st of June and it’s a fragile age.

 

 

 I am also  coming  to terms with a total change in my daily routine. I have opted out of the Gurgaon-style of housekeeping where I had a whole contingent of staff and someone to oversee them, to trying to work out another methodology. One that gives me efficient housekeeping with less staff and more space of be creative and write. This means that I have to do a whole lot more chores than I have ever done my entire life. Even as a student in London, when my dad was keen I take up a flat, find a room-mate and do that kind of living, I opted to stay in a hostel. Cooking and cleaning have always interfered with things that I would really like to spend my time on. But, the help here is not what I can handle and an open plan kitchen makes it rather crowded during the day – to accommodate a maid and me. Our auric fields clash. So, I have to do the dishes and make my own bed and cook (some of the time). I haven’t got used to the routine yet, so maybe this also makes me restive, but between this and mummy’s precarious health situation, just hours before her birthday, were unsettling and the rain only seemed to make it worse. In anycase, I am not calm in the rain. I can’t sit for hours watching it pattering down. I want to get up and do something. I want to be out there in the rain.

 

Yesterday, a young neighbour accompanied me and we went rather far from the neighbourhood, walking through lanes and by-lanes that I hadn’t seen till then. This evening, being on my own, I was less adventurous. Cycling was a option I could have explored, but didn’t because the rain was really heavy and while it keeps the dogs indoors – out of barking reach and scaring me away. I decided to walk. And with minutes I realised this intuitive decision was the right one. I had not yet exited the Riviera Sapphire complex, and saw there was water logging more than six inches deep. I made a mental note to return from the other gate because the last thing I needed was to trample a snake or encounter a frog or any other reptilian or amphibian which I plug together in the general category of creepy-crawlies.

 

Recently, another young friend, whose lived most of her life in Australia, but now lives in Siolim, told me that she had ordered a pair of gumboots online and couldn’t figure out why no-one in Goa wears them. Then I had laughed and said but why not let your feet get wet, its fun. But today, I thought of getting a pair myself. There were not just puddles to traipse through, these were rivers flowing down the slopes of Siolim. The earth bleeds such an intense russet which is so opaque, it is impossible to see what you're walking on or into. And, at the very start of my trek I fell into something deeper than it seemed. Without even realising it, the grit of the stones got caught between my big toe, on the left foot, and the sandal strap, and within minutes I had a blister that started to bleed. Fortunately it was a tiny one and I strapped the sandal Velcro ties tightly enough so that there was no movement, nothing grazing against the skin and I completed my walk up to the Chapora Bridge or Siolim bridge as it is called, and back.

 

Turning right as I left Sapphire I headed for the Sodiem Road which can be quite a busy one but fortunately for me it was lean time. Just before I turned onto this road, at the very corner, I stood and looked out at the paddy fields filled with water. Bits of green stuck out of reddish muddy water and it was quite a sight with the odd white stork hunting for something to eat in the earth. The cows, whose backs they are usually found on, were probably sheltering from the rain and the food in  the fields more enticing. This expanse of fields is what I can see from the swimming pool at Sapphire. When I looked today, it seemed as if the sea had come right up to my doorstep. The fields stretch for miles and are called Viangan, which I am told is because they get water logged and therefore are  usually sown in the winter months. When the paddy is green it is a treat for the eyes and I am fortunate to see this en-route, to and from the local markets, almost every day. Elsewhere, one can see people busy in their fields. Small tractors, colourful raincoats and umbrellas can be sighted from afar as men and women go about the arduous job of tilling their fields.

 

 

Just a little further down the Sodiem road going towards Tarchi Bhat, about five hundred meters from Sapphire, is another set of flats called Blue lagoon. And within yards of this complex, the road is flanked by fields and these too are water logged at this point. Although the frogs don’t usually start their natter until it gets dark, probably fooled by the darker shades of the sky, they were quite loud  at 5.30 pm. I had heard them yesterday too and thought they were the pigs, who lived in the land we had passed, frolicking in the rain and making a racket. But, when asked if pigs made that kind of sound, I listened and it certainly wasn’t an oink, but a sort of oinky-croak – very loud. And this is what I heard again on my walk today. I scanned the water surface to spot the frogs. I am told they are rather large too, but I could only hear them and didn’t see even one. I walked and walked through the rivulets and puddles and my blister started troubling me.

 

 

I stopped at a local kirana store. In my knee-length, lilac coloured raincoat, dripping water from every inch of my being; my hands wet, my face dribbled with raindrops and cap pulled close over my head; I must have made a very curious sight. I took off my cap and the grey hair may well have made things seem even more eccentric than before. But, when  I asked for some cotton wool, informing them that I wasn’t carrying any money, the boys who were manning the Krishan General store were rather sweet. Without much-ado one of them took out the cotton from the Puja stand  - the soft cotton that is used to make the wick for the diyas and handed it to me, saying that I may be better off going to a medical store. Soft as the cotton-wool was, it only made things worse. I thanked them,  abandoned the first aid and continued to walk as I had done before, tightening the strap as much as I could to avoid any friction between the toe and sandal. And somehow, I walked more than six kilometres, because of the puddles where I would stop more than just occasionally to wash the wound. Letting water ease the discomfort, even if just for a while.

 

 

I was now walking past familiar terrain. I was heading towards the main road that comes from St. Anthony’s church at Siolim Square on the Aguada-Siolim-Chapora road. I passed Burye’s from where I bought the paint to colour my stool ( a project still pending completion). Then Sahil's shop - the furniture maker from Dehradun who’d made the chest of drawers in the local Shivan wood, which now houses my stash of sequins and beads. His shop is out in the open with tarpaulin for a cover and today,  he had plastic-wrapped it on all sides (like most vendors who have gone home for the off-season in Goa do.) Sahil too, it seemed had gone home.  I spied a  gap on the side that had opened up with the wind and wanted to go across the road to pull the plastic tight but there was so much water everywhere with loose mud too boot, that compassion took a back seat. Even on the way back, I had to remind myself that even though I was out for fun, self-preservation must have its say. He had after all packed up this way, knowing the rains would come and he was an old hand at it, so  knew what it meant. Besides,  there must be someone looking out, to have enabled him to leave all that furniture out in the open with just bamboo and plastic for protection – which was hardly any, was it! Maybe  he’d just taken the day off, and hadn’t gone home after all. And so I  continued walking through the puddles, and running into deep waters, then spying no traffic so rushing to the higher ground – small stretches of tarmac where the road was uneven. Its funny, how one doesn’t notice that the road is so uneven while driving through or even walking otherwise, but water shows up all the cracks, all the shoddy workmanship of road building.

 

 

It’s about 3 Km from Sapphire to the bridge that spans the Chapora River. Before this was constructed, which is just 8 years ago, you had to take a ferry across the river. It must have been an awesome experience to pass by the dense mangroves and see the occasional crocodile too. And this is the season when they come to this part of the river, when the water is sweetened by the rainfall. Otherwise there is too much salt from the sea which the crocs don’t like. On my way back down from the bridge, I took a detour,  I came past the Tar Fish market. Clams, oysters and mussels are what fisherman catch aplenty in these parts. The steps from the jetty to the fish market are always littered with discarded mussel shells, especially those that have a viridian green tint. Apparently they were traditionally used to make a kind of chuna for painting houses, before the era of distemper paint. Now they just lie on the steps, like garbage, waiting for the tide to carry them into the sea. The Fish market is only operative in  the mornings, so was deserted by the time I got there. All the brightly coloured plastic tubs were overturned and each person's place saved for the next days trade. It is mostly the women who sit in the market. Earlier, it was just an informal gathering of fisherman’s wives at the village hub and bus stop. People would come from Chopdem, Morjhim, Pernem and beyond, travelling from across the river to catch the buses to and from Mapusa. So the women, prudent as ever, collected there to sell the days catch.

 

 

In the empty market-shed I met Anil and two of his colleagues who told me that the way it was raining, we’d had three months of rain in just three days. Adding, that it was too early for the monsoon and in the past three to four years, there had been much less rain. I asked Anil about the crocodile and asked if someday I could ride in his boat to catch a glimpse of it. If he had seen it. He walked to the edge of the jetty, and moved a few feet back and gesticulating, said it is very long, almost ten to twelve feet. "My friends go into the mangroves to collect the oysters and in all these years it hasn’t bothered them, but the unsuspecting dogs who dip their heads into the water at night, have been gulped down in a jiffy". Apparently a few yards down from the fish market, along the river’s edge there is a chicken and meat shop which throws its waste out at night and the croc feeds there, so is a common sight in these parts.

 

 

When I had stood on top of the bridge and looked both sides, towards Morjhim on the West and Pernem on the East, I couldn’t see much. The broken lines of water were so intense that it was as if sheets of plastic made the ambience translucent and unclear.  And when I reached the steps of the fish market, I realised how much the river had  swollen. It was beginning to ebb because the tide had changed and was working its way back into the sea, but when I had been there buying fish some weeks back, there were many steps and today I could only see two. I had on my raincoat which keeps me quite snug, but today, the rain was just too much. And I could feel wetness on my shoulder and neck areas. I suppose these things are not made for a two hour walk in the rain, but intended for those who need to get places or get home from work and are on errands for short durations. I cannot imagine the makers of raincoats taking into consideration the eccentricities of those who want to walk in the rain, for the sheer pleasure of it and that too for hours at a stretch.

 

I was still far from home and needed to go to the loo. I knew I shouldn’t have had that cup of tea before my walk. I realised that with all that water around me, that I could have piddled in my pants and no-one would even notice, but thankfully  I remembered that Amancio was only a few steps from the fish market. Amancio is a family restaurant and bar run by Ashley who has taken over from his father, who took charge from his father. It started out as a general store selling fish and tackle as well as stuff for daily use, graduated to a liquor store and now it is a rather nice space in the middle of a small village

 

 

It’s getting darker by the minute. I pass by Uday Moyhe the general store that sold me the fishing net just last week and stop to say hello, next I pass by the shop run by Mangama and Srinivas from Hyderabad who iron my clothes. I haven’t been to collect my laundry but reassure Mangama whose untypically lounging among the piles of clothes, that I will come by in the car tomorrow. As I walk, I visually map the route back home. Shall I go past the Goa electric depot, which means I must go farther the Siolim-Aguada Road. Or shall I go back via the Sodiem Road. I choose the latter and return to a rowdy chorus of crickets and frogs. My god, what a noise they were making. I still couldn’t see any, but it was a screeching, girgitting-frogging-croaking at different keys. The sopranos and baritones punctuated with the sharp tenor of the oinking croaks. How I wished I could see even one frog, but I didn’t want to be surprised by any jumping on the road ahead of me. I keep telling myself that I cannot hope to live in such unfettered natural surroundings and expect them to toe the line of social niceties. But I didn’t see any of those large, loud frogs.

 

 

And finally, finally, after shedding copious tears, it has stopped raining. The skies have decided to call it a night and I must catch some sleep too. Actually its past 1 am, and another day, forecast with thunder storms and equally unrelenting rain.

 

PS: on this walk i didnt carry a phone, so the pictures are from various other trips, usually in the car...