Beef is a part of my memory; part of my world view.
Therefore erasing beef from my plate is as cruel as erasing my memory.
Authoritarian governments make people undergo shock treatments so that they
could erase their memories. Demagoguery is a form of shock treatment. Mentally
sick people are treated with shock treatment so that rebuilding a set of new
memories could be possible. Autocratic governments consider people as patients
who are liable to undergo shock treatments. Ban on beef is such a shock
treatment.
Beef plays an integral role in my childhood memories. My
mother never ate beef though my father relished it. In their Sunday moments of
togetherness which remained absent for prolonged periods, my father peeled
small onions and chopped green chillies. My mother washed the beef clean and
fried the ingredients in a frying pan. The fragrance of the frying coconut crumbs
mixed with the intoxicating smells of the spices filled not only our home but
also the neighbourhood. Almost everyone in the vicinity knew that we would
have beef for lunch. But we were not alone in this well known passion for
beef. Each house in the area, on Sundays turned out to be a special culinary
zone where beef was cooked with the imported taste of ladies who were brought
in marriage into our village.
(A painting by Chaim Soutine)
It was beef that made me aware that everyone who came near
me was not a friend. My mother never liked to go near a butcher’s shop. So when
I was grown up enough, that means around nine years old, I was sent to the
market to buy beef. My mother had fainted once she saw a huge carcass of a buffalo
or bull hanging from a butcher’s hook. It was in her childhood. But women
generally made sacrifices at that time. Though she did not eat, she cooked beef
for her husband who became our father in due course of time. My father did not
go to the market to buy beef because he thought it was a notch below his
dignity. So I was sent to buy beef. One kilo beef, I was supposed to buy that.
One kilo beef was then priced at Rs.5. My father, on one Sunday gave me five
rupees and sent me to the market. On the way a friend joined me in the walk. He
threw his hand around my shoulder. In those days holding hands and throwing
hands around the shoulder were not considered to be bad acts. Moral policing
was an unheard of notion. At the market gate, my friend took leave of me and
went to his way. I went to the butcher’s shop and bought my beef. When I put
hand into my pocket, to my horror I found the money was missing. My ‘friend’
had taken it away. Crying, I went back home. My father caned me and later gave
me another five rupees and sent me again to the market. Beef had made its mark
not only in my mind but also in my body.
Every year, on a particular day which is called the
Sankranti day, every household in Kerala bought beef, cooked and ate. Buying
beef and eating was considered to be auspicious on that day. It was a Hindu
festival and no VHP, no BJP, no RSS then told us that it was a bad deed. Cow
and bulls were like word and meaning then also. They were in the scriptures,
they were the vehicles of gods, but there was no objection. We Malayali’s had a
maxim also to justify any act of killing to eat: Any sin incurred by killing will
fade off if you eat it. Irrespective of caste and creed, irrespective of gender
and age, people ate beef. And let me tell you cows and bulls were butchered
then and we knew only their flesh as beef. Buffalo meat was very dear. Only in
certain spots you got buffalo meat. And you had to book it well in advance,
even then. It was Indira Gandhi’s time. Information technology was limited to
radios. The fastest message was the messages sent by a cycle rider. So on that
Sunday morning, after visiting the local temples, young men in the village rode
their cycles to the butchers’ shop. Beef was not a taboo then.
(painting by Chiam Soutine)
We were growing up. I too was growing up. In my late teen
years, growing up was marked by a few signs; switching from half pants to
dhotis was first in the order. Shaving the facial hair was the second one.
Third, you moved alone at night in the village and your night was limited by
the stroke of seven thirty. Fourth, you could gather at a junction or culvert
and spend time with your peer group people. Fifth, secretly you could smoke a cigarette
and could chew all those herbs hanging from fences to ward off the foul smell.
Sixth, you could look at girls with a different heart jumping inside your
ribcage. But the ultimate thing was defined by beef. If you are really a big
guy, you ate beef and porata from a local restaurant. You go to temple, on the
way back home you ate beef and porata. You could sport a tilak on your forehead
and eat beef. None objected, if someone objected, one plate of beef for him
would have solved the problem. With that beef we built up our muscles in the
local gyms where one dumb bell shared by the youths from the whole village.
Beef literally gave us our bodies.
Slowly beef became an exotic food, the way tapioca became
exotic. People stopped eating beef because they thought cows, bulls and
buffalos generally came under the category of ‘mother’ but because now they
could afford chicken and mutton. Economy had changed the mindset people. Once
upon a time we ate chicken once in a year and we felt that day very special
than our birthdays. Mutton was a scene, which was meant to be looked at than
eaten. Beef was humble enough to be democratic. But change in economy brought
change in food habits. People started drinking coke and cola instead of lemon
water, chaas and simple water. The day Indians started taking water in plastic
bottles for using at the two openings of their bodies, we could say we have
ushered ourselves into the new economy. Beef lost out in this new economy. But
as it turned out to be an exotic food item thanks to it being pushed to the
margins its price increased in direct proportion with that of chicken and
mutton.
(painting by Chiam Soutine)
Whenever we went to study elsewhere, we looked for a beef
outlet. Sadly we knew, in the so called Hindu dominated areas beef was not
seen. So we hunted down the places where beef was sold. It used to be in the
places where mosques were located. Muslims ate beef and we became very close to
those Muslim brothers who sold us beef. In Gujarat we found the places where
beef was sold. In Delhi , in UP and in Hyderabad we found out beef outlets. Once,
away from home for almost two years without eat beef, on the first chance when
I could put my hand own raw beef, I got a kilo, cooked it in a pressure cooker
and ate it all by myself in one go and on the next day found myself admitted to
a hospital for loose motions. The love for beef was so much. All my friends
were/are good cooks and when it came to the cooking of beef they were
magicians. One of my friend poured whatever he had in his hand while cooking
beef and made it into a special dish. I never kept acrylic colours near while
he was cooking. He tried rum, coke, whiskey, beer and even bhang with beef, and
the result was intoxicatingly good beef fry and curry. One of my friends tells
me that he calls himself a hunter when he goes to buy beef on Sundays because
it was a rare thing and to be hunted down from some corner of the city.
When I am in Mumbai I go to Leopold to eat some beef chilly.
It is a must for me. I had even vomitted a whole day once after over eating beef
from there. But still I eat like a devotee eating the Prasad of a beloved god.
I am a lover beef. In Delhi I got to the INA Market to eat beef. I may not be
eating beef today for health reasons. But I vote for beef. And I am ready to
defy the rules by eating beef throwing the advices of the doctor to the wind.
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