In the name of cow

In the name of cow

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I did my schooling from Dehi. We were teased by North Indian friends for eating fish. Those days in Delhi Bengali meant fish eater and madrasis were the south Indians whose staple food was idli ,dosa  . I have not seen any of my north or south Indian friends eating non-veg, it was kind of taboo. Yes, all my Bengali friends were eating non-veg. During those days i never heard anyone eating beef. Come to think of that during our school days’ meat meant mutton and not chicken. During  one of our biyearly visit to maternal place in Bengal I witnessed sacrifice of a goat during some puja, that ghastly scene made a lasting impression in my subconscious mind and I stopped eating mutton, may be from class two or so. In our house those days whenever mutton was cooked then my mother would prepare separately egg curry for me. Of course I started eating mutton and chicken when I joined IIT,Kharagpur. Now I am more comfortable with aloo paratha than with mutton curry.
I remember "Cow"was the very popular subject for essay in all vernacular schools and almost in all languages.

Those days in Delhi we had seen sadhus coming with cow and declaring those as very holy , one could ask any question to those and those cows would reply by swaying their heads either sideways meant “no” or up and down meant ‘’Yes”. So the question has to be objective type with yes and no answers. Someone would ask, “Will I get a job?” obviously the cow would nod it’s head meaning ‘Yes’’. If someone asked ,”will it rain?” The cow would move its head sideways meaning ‘no’. Nothing divine here the clever sadhu with the rope tied around the neck of the cow would make it do all those head motions. This of course I analyzed much later. Sometimes some sadhu would bring a freak cow with a fifth leg hanging from the shoulder and declare that to be very auspicious. So all the ladies of our muhalla would line up to donate rice or money to the sadhu and get blessings. Yes, in north India cow is revered and not surprising all these cow related things are happening in Northern belt of India. In connection with job I was posted in Southern and Western India and found that in Tamil Nadu getting non-veg in common restaurant in 1980s was a problem. One has to go to military restaurant for non-veg, I had gone to such restaurants in Chennai, those were not really owned by army or any such thing but because they served non-veg so were called military restaurant. Now when I go to Madurai for Windmills, the official lunch served by the host is vegetarian.

I faced extreme vegetarianism in Wanakbori ,Gujarat  during 1985 to 88, no meat or fish shop was allowed in the Electricity Board Township. I was going to a market in a slum away from the Township for meat, for fish I was travelling some 8 kms away to a small town .Only egg was allowed to be sold in the township.

Now I come across many Marwaris, Punjabis who don’t eat non-veg in their houses but relish those in restaurants. During my posting in Refineries of IOC in Gauhati and Barauni I had no problem with non-veg, like in Bengal those were easily available in cooked or raw form anywhere.
The people of Andhra are like in Bengal which i realized during my 3 years posting in Vizag Steel Plant, they are non veg all the way.
Display of carcass of cow openly in a meat shop i had seen in Shillong, Khasis and Garos go for beef in a big way. 
While in Bhopal the officer's club dinner used to be veg affair till i reached there. After my joining as Executive Director  the club  started having a non veg dish in the special dinner parties, now possibly it is back to veg there. The marriage dinners would be veg affair excepting for Bengali marriages. I can never forget the delicious kabbabs and Birayani of MrsBuniyad Ali which Buniyad would bring lovingly during Eids, i really miss those and also Aftab who too would bring home cooked biryani during Eid.
By the way within last 3 weeks i attended 2 special dinners in Kolkata and both were totally vegetarian, of course those are nonbong affair.
During my first Dhaka visit in 1999 or so Dilawar Hussain a manager of Bangladesh Electricity Board was assigned to me to show around. He took me to Chittagong Power Station and then we returned to Dhaka. While walking the Dhaka Streets i saw a meat shop and meat in the form of a tree trunk. I asked Dilawar what was that. He was looking embarrassed and requested me to walk faster past that shop. But my curiosity got better of me so i again asked him,"What was that?" He shyly stammered and said, "Beef!" I was touched by his sincerity as he did not want to hurt my sentiments so was trying to avoid the question. 

This cow or non-veg is a kind of cultural issue and varies from region to region but some unscrupulous guys are whipping up sentiments to make these as national issue and diverting from the main issue of poverty, unemployment etc. As I have noticed there are good number of citizen who worship cow and at the same time we have a section who enjoy beef, then there is that section who are part of the supply chain of beef. So there three categories of people, vegetarians and non-beef eaters like me, beef eaters and beef suppliers, it is necessary that the fine balance is restored within the framework of the constitution as soon as possible to avoid the present atmosphere of barbarism in the name of cow vigilantism.