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Meat, poison, and other prejudices
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Perhaps our fear of other people's food is, like our fear of other people, a fear that we will be seduced by alien pleasures that will alienate us from our own selves. KALA KRISHNAN RAMESH provides some food for thought.
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IN A time when more and more people are willingly switching to hot water as food, it seems a little ironic to be talking about food prejudices. But for every hot-water eater, there are many of us who don't draw the line at looking - whether it be Sugu's wicked payasam, Nazneen's enticing mutton biryani, or Ruth's tempting chocolate cake!
The hot water at least eliminates fat and toxins, but what of the prejudice that food itself is, like all the things of this "imperfect" world, something to be given up, renounced for "true pleasures" as we "progress" in life? It gets me each time I hear someone say: "I have given up sweets, I no longer eat meat on this or that day," as a preface to saying that they have turned their thoughts towards God. That is meant to put you - guzzler, glutton, mired in the phenomenal world - firmly in your place.
So why did Trailinga Swami, Varanasi's legendary God-crazed mystic, love sweets? Why did Adi Sankara, who said: "The Absolute alone is real, this world delusion," also say, "Give alms... Parvathi is Mother, Shiva Father and all the world home"? Why does Ganesha eat so many modakas, and why does he punish the moon for laughing at Him for having eaten? Why is Christ called the Bread of Life? Why do the Sufis say: "The curse of Allah is upon those who do not serve everything to their guests." Why does Zen celebrate tea and sake?
I guess here lies the difference between piety and devotion - piety cuts off life's embellishments, including foods, in order to better concentrate on the goal, be it God, or physical discipline. Devotion abandons itself to life, seeing the goal in enjoyment of the feast. We sometimes suspect that other people eat funny stuff simply because we don't know, but sometimes people are also prejudiced in favour of funny stuff because they don't know. Little Shyama thought that Susan Chang, her classmate was the storybook demon that ate little children and their parents, because someone had told her that "Chinee" people ate "worms, ants, dogs, rats, snakes and all other living things." Till she saw reassuring rice, carrots and chilly chicken in Susan's lunch box. Harithi actually ate little children till the Buddha hid away her own little son to show how much a parent suffered at the loss of a child and she began to eat only left over offerings at the local shrine.
Perhaps our fear of other people's food is, like our fear of other people, a fear that we will be won over, seduced by alien pleasures that will alienate us from the comfort and reassurance of the familiar territory of our own selves, our well-known foods. Perhaps this is why the Aghoris, mystics par excellence, can eat everything - from fruit and sweets, to carcasses and human or animal excreta. The state of being open to all the world, to all people and all foods may well be beyond most of us. But trust could begin with a bite of your neighbour's different food.
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Metro Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Delhi
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Thiruvananthapuram
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