VEGGIE TALK!

Im the half brahmin girl! My dad s a Lingayath my mum s a Brahmin so that explains the name given by a friend.
What on earth am I writing here?? No! Not a blog on intercaste marriages!!!Maybe that can be a subject for another post.
Im not writing a blog on caste discrimination..blah blah n the likes.
Im expressing a feeling which is just bursting out of my head at this given moment and I simply have to let it go.
Im writing about my poor little helplessly mute friends, animals.
Let me explain the half Brahmin factor.
My parents are not orthodox people. Self explanatory I guess because they got married to each other despite stiff resistance around 30 years ago…nobody in my house had strict religious rules. As a kid I remember gorging on mum s egg curry and once in a while dad and me did enjoy the occasional fish , n prawn when he took us out for dinner! Mum never let us get meat home so I never saw meat being cooked. I was fascinated by animals even as a 3 year old but never understood how those chicken pieces landed on my plate or that those chicken pieces back in time belonged to a lovable hen tending to her chicks which would have made me squeal with joy had I seen them! So I went on as a lil hypocrite who loved caring for live animals but eating them with equal joy coz somehow dint have the intelligence enough to connect the two together.
I was….Still am a big admirer of Maneka Gandhi for all the steps she took to promote prevention of cruelty to animals and religiously watched every episode of Head and Tails that was being aired back then!
I tended to hurt sparrows… fed hungry mongrels out of my lunch box, wiped a wet shivering puppy with my lunch napkin[mum will kill me if she ever reads this!!!] but I still did not realize what I was doing or where I was going wrong…
Somewhere towards the beginning of college, I became a member of the PFA and for that u need to sign an agreement that says that you should turn into a complete vegetarian. I followed it religiously…. For a couple of years!
And one day a casual sms conversation changed my life! I was telling a friend about how yum the fish n chips is in a restaurant is ! and boy! He gave me a reaction which should have offended me , but then I realized what a big hypocrite I was being.
I swallowed the harsh reaction , put my female ego aside and went ahead and gave up meat for the rest of my life. YES! For the rest of my life and I can confidently say it.
Today I try my level best to not even unintentionally hurt beings I so love and adore.
You can’t be an animal lover AND a meat eater at the same time. You can’t find dogs adorable and find chicken yummy together. How about putting your dog s meat in the burger that you are eating?? I can’t believe it took so long for me to realize it.
.
This piece of writing is meant for everybody, if it changes one person, id be glad, coz a good cause never stops growing. It’s a cycle, maybe I can’t stop animal cruelty entirely, but I know that somewhere we all could make a difference. I dint become this way on my own, somebody reminded me of what I was doing, in turn I reminded someone too. This is especially for the category of people who I belonged to at one point of time. Please do not get mixed up. Take a decision and be firm about it. Give 'peas' a chance.Go vegetarian!

Till death do us apart?

Marriages are made in heaven. Or so they say. Or are they really? I dunno….Iv seen some work, Iv seen some fail miserably. I haven’t been married yet so I really am an outsider there. But who can stop one from observing and coming to conclusions.
What is marriage all about? Marriage is considered to be the ceremony marking the legal union of a man and a woman for cohabitation and often procreation. This is what I got from the dictionary. But what is it, really?
A friend of mine got hitched recently, In spite of belonging to different religious backgrounds, they went ahead. Of course, they had mature family members to support them too, but no problems there…GOD bless them. It was a small quick affair owing to personal reasons; she spent 3 days at home, had a register marriage and walked into college again 3 days later. They say marriage changes people.. Well.. She hasn’t, she is still the same old madcap friend and I love her for it.
As a kid iv always dreamt of this perfect wedding to this handsome stranger, Come on, which girl hasn’t ??? But today, standing just a few steps away from the great big plunge, there obviously will be a nervous shifting of steps, a tense eyebrow…especially when I look at all those marriages that haven’t really worked.
. The question of what if? arises and it makes u spiral down into the vortex of doubts and reservations about the whole affair. You see people cheating, people not giving their hundred percent, people who are not affectionate, people who treat marriage like just another social responsibility, people who are genuinely unhappy with the partner that fate( or rather family) has bestowed on them. What do u do when u find urself in the middle of something that is going nowhere?? Do u stay put just because u took those holy rounds around a fire? or because a priest declared u man and wife? Or because your neighbours and relatives would bad mouth you if u left? Or because u are just too afraid of being alone?
My mother says that the minute u exchange those holy vows with someone, u accept the man however he is and begin to love his mistakes too. Yes, I do understand that u do all that ,provided there is a lot of ‘love’ involved. How does it work though, when u have met the guy just a couple of times?? Do u love him because he belongs to the same religious background that u belong to? Do u love him because your horoscopes match? Do you love him because his family background is ‘good’? or because he draws a six figure salary and is six feet tall and works on sixth avenue, Manhattan , New York city? Do u settle for a good life and learn to love him and cohabit with him ? or would u hope to find ur perfect companion and choose to live with him even if he seems to be the most imperfect guy on the planet for the whole world??
Im glad my mom made her choice and did it perfectly,. She chose to go against the whole world and marry the man she loved. I owe my existence to that choice of hers.
I do not want to say that arranged marriages are all compromises, im sure some work perfectly. It definitely won’t work that way for me though.

I just firmly believe that GOD made man and woman . He did not make any rules or religions. It’s high time we grow up and choose our partners ourselves. Even if we make a mistake, we have nobody but ourselves to blame .and besides, there s a wise old saying which says it is better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all.