When Shobha Mathur comes across advertisements for Indian travellers complete with vegetarian meals and even cooks, she turns green with envy.
In the 70s and 80s the scene was quite different. For my sins I am a total vegetarian – not even eating eggs. My husband has no problem anywhere. He believes in trying local cuisines and mostly enjoys them. Even I believe in that theoretically, but could not follow for obvious reasons! Not that it is from want of effort. I tried several times but always ended throwing up. Having suffered on my various travels, I made sure that all my children eat non-vegetarian. When we went out in 1969, apart from Air India no other airline had a clue about vegetarian food. We could have a choice of meat/chicken/fish. I used to steal buns/ vegetables from my family’s trays.
When I told someone I was a vegetarian, I had some stock responses depending on the responder: 1) Fear: Vegetarian? Are you contagious?, 2) Amazement: You are a vegetable?, 3) Anger: How can you decline to eat this? Our chef has specially prepared it/it is our national dish/you are insulting our cuisine! Finally I took to fibbing. I said I could not eat as I had a medical condition. That brought on mostly concern asking what I would like.
This story is from the November 2017 edition of Dignity Dialogue.
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This story is from the November 2017 edition of Dignity Dialogue.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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