Vegan Reflections

Note: After this post, and after being vegan for 2 years, I did - out of convenience and complacence - back-transition into a vegetarian lifestyle. I try to cook vegan for a good part, though I am not strict about it anymore. I think vegans are very brave, creative, and committed, and would advice other vegans to not follow my lead.

I have noticed that trying to be vegan motivates me to cook more often - perhaps some constraints help bring out the creativity. What's the fun in cooking if you have no restrictions, right? I would like to give a special mention to earthvegan.blogspot.com for one of the most amazing vegan blogs that I have read (and perhaps the only Indian one). Thanks, Earth Vegan, for motivating me.

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I turned vegan in January 2003. Being vegan and Indian is probably easier than it is for most people except when it comes to desserts! And there is the fact that in India, vegetarianism is more well understood than anywhere else (even lacto vegetarianism), but I doubt people know of or would sympathize with a species that does not drink milk.

There a few daily and monthly challenges when one becomes vegan. One of them is the sudden quandary one is placed in at breakfast. What to eat, especially if one's favorite dish has been Egg Bhurji. There had been numerous days in college when I had missed my first lecture because I needed that extra time to savor my Bhurji. I still award the dish the capital letters it deserves.

The second is when your hostess starts serving dessert; sample this: "Sorry, I don't eat kheer, no sorry, not gulab jamun either, not roshogulla please . Oh, I know you are Bengali, I don't meant to offend you, I just... I just... er.. do you have kheer made with soymilk? Oh Soymilk is milk of soy beans. No No, soybeans don't give milk when pregnant, they are just blended with water to make what is called soymilk. Oh YEAH! I can have sooji ka halwa... uh.. (in a whisper) did you put ghee? " By now, both my hostess and I are in tears.

The third and most irritating challenge is sending back the waiter at the restaurant your friends have taken you to, to ask the cook about each dish "Does it have dairy? Does it have eggs?" "Sorry, Ma'am we have NOTHING without eggs and dairy, except green salad" . And then.... you fall to the realm of ghaas-poos again

Again there are advantages. You get to fill a page about your vegan exploits when you have no other material about yourself to write home about. You become the center of attention in most places, and so what if most people think you are weird, at least no one is indifferent to you.

And of course, I can look every cow and hen in its eyes. But then again, doing that had once incited a cow into thinking I was challenging it and I was running down the streets of Madras with horns pointed at my butt. Thankfully, I consider myself stronger than a hen, and am ready for other similar challenges with hens and roosters in the future. So much for equal rights.

Last but not the least, I warn those with Bengali connections, life can get very difficult. My mother-in-law (with the implicit consent of my husband of course) warned me, that I could be vegan all I liked, as long as I ate fish when I visited Calcutta!

Disclaimer: The last paragraph (and several of the others, except the first) are entirely a figment of my imagination. My in-laws are great and very supportive people, and I actually love fish.