When I told my friends that I was gonna stay in India for a while, they were all shocked. Some of them were worried: “How on earth are you going to survive there with only Indian food?”; but most of them were happy with the perspective that I’d lose either some weight or my food fussiness. They know I’m scared of Indian food! When I was in Malaysia, whenever I ate out with my friends, the first thing came out of my mouth was: “No Indian food please!!”. Curry makes me cry and I hate the little monster called “jeera”. If there were 1 reason why I shouldn’t go to India, it’d probably be jeera. Its strong smell can keep me 7 hours flying away!

[Jeera gives very strong flavor which many people associate with Indian food]

So I came to Indian with that curse foreshadowing my only habit and hobby [aka “eating”], and then things got worse.

Indian food is S P I C Y!!! The worst thing is that Indians use a totally different standard for spicy food. For example, when I went to a Chinese restaurant in Pune (I’ve been sticking with Chinese food for my own safety), I told the guy who took my order that I wanted “no spicy, no chilly” food and used the body language to explain “suicide”. He nodded in sympathy: “No chilly” and brought me a plate from which I could pick out that much chilly after half an hour scrutinizing. If not for I’m in India, I’d think that he deliberately did that to murder me.

When I showed the picture to my Indian friends hoping for some comfort, they all told me the same: “This chilly is not spicy.” You’re kidding me!!! In Indian standard, it’s not spicy; but in my standard, it’s enough to peel my tongue’s skin and make my jump in pain for one whole week.

Not only that, after 1 week in Mumbai, I found my stomach craving for some green veggie. When I say “green veggie”, I mean veggie which is green by nature, and still green after being cooked. In India, they eat a lot of veggie, but most of them are bulbs, wheat and the way they cook makes it far different from the veggie I’m used to. If you are familiar with Vietnamese or Chinese food, you will see that we eat a lot green veggie like cabbage, Chinese cabbage, field cabbage, cress, morning glory, water dropwort, plus many more kinds of veggie that I don’t know the English words for them.

And my body is dying for some meat!!

Even though I’m still struggling to find what I want to do, I know one thing for sure is that I will never become a vegetarian. I worship meat.

I never thought it would become a problem one day, until I came to India – a country where, according to my friend Kranti [a vegetarian himself], vegetarians account for 70% of total population or even more. Almost all restaurants are vegetarian. Almost all my friends are vegetarian. During my 3 weeks here, I’ve met more vegetarians I’d met during the course of my life!! I started to develop a phobia against eating out with an Indian as I’m afraid that I’d end up in a vegetarian no matter what. I feel deep sympathy for vegetarians in the land full of cold-blood carnivore like me.

But I never understood the reason why would someone become a vegetarian by choice. Most of them told me that they didn’t like meat which makes absolutely no sense to me,  some of them are worried about global warming (FYI, livestock – cows and pigs – is responsible for 18 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas problem). And then something changed my mind. I walked by a local market and saw the most horrifying scene ever.

The chicken was still alive.

They cut its head.

And then they did like this. The legs were still trembling in pain.

Soon it was all left of a chicken

For the first time in my life, I considered becoming a vegetarian.

P/S:

1. This post was supposed to be posted 1 week ago, before I discovered Colaba! Thanks to this wonder metropolitan area, now everyone can have meat!

2. My first week in India was awesome! Thanks to Auntie Ramitha – Antoreep’s Mom, I was introduced to awesomely amazing Bengali cuisine. I love Bengali food, I love luchi, I love hilsa fish, I love mango chutney. I shall blog about Bengali food soon!

3. Question: Hindus don’t eat meat and there are a lot of cows in India, so where does all the beef go after the cow die?

Tags: Chicken, Curry, Indian cuisine, Indian food, Jeera, Meat, Spicy Food, Vegetarian