A Happy Life Is A Life Without Four Dreadful Things

Firstly, I eat vegetarian food. I don't like certain things. They are tomatoes, onions, garlic and capsicums. Tomatoes tastes bland and it looks like meat, for me. Onions smell dreadful. I don't like garlic since they have very strong smell. If onions smell dreadful 250 times, garlic smells 2500 times more dreadful. I don't eat these at home or outside. My mother does not prepare food that contains tomatoes, onion, garlic and capsicum. She also says that she grew up in a family where people never used to buy garlic. 

Now, I will share with you a variety of vegetables that I like in my food. 

Those are potatoes, cabbage, broccoli, green beans, green peas, carrot, beet root, bitter gourd, ridge gourd, snake gourd, guar or cluster beans, flat beans, ladies finger (okra), spinach, leaves of solanum nigrum, amaranth leaves, dwarf copper leaves, green lettuce, cucumber, ivy gourd, plantains, plantain stem, plantain flower, raw mango, gooseberry (almost daily we eat) and many many many more vegetables that I don't remember now. And, I like all the kinds of fruits on earth. I eat all kinds of legumes, pulses like variety of dals, ragi, chana, jowar, bajra, peas etc. I love to drink kanji (mainly ragi kanji) that many other children do not even smell. I like bitter gourd the most because it has the bitterness that soothes. I don't feel like vomiting after eating bitter gourd. And, potatoes are always filling. I think broccoli is the tastiest. I like to munch on crunchy carrots with honey and almonds or with lemon and salt, in many different ways I like munch on carrots. The greens are best with rotis. The gourd prepared with moong dal are best with rice. My mom prepares many different varieties of rasam (soup) that takes me to the higher realms of this Universe. Raw Mango, Gooseberry rasam, pepper, jeera and what not. 

My problem is this. When I go outside home, I generally order food and request that they don't add onion. For example, Vegetable fried rice. All I say, "please, no onions". They nod very happily but I get only what I call as onionaic fried rice. I feel disgusted because the food has something that I don't like. I feel that most time people do not understand that I really do not want to eat onions and I feel that they force me to eat onions. They give me lectures that I have to eat onions. That makes me feel disgusted again. Recently, I felt I was tricked to drink a rasam that had garlic in it, but I didn't know how to say 'No'. All I ask is vegetarian food without these 4 dreadful things. Only my mom understands how much I do not like it and she never forces me to eat THESE FOUR DREADFUL THINGS.

My experience in school was not pleasant too. When people were eating meat around me in the canteen, it made me feel like I would want to vomit. A boy whose name start with 'E' even tried to hang a piece of meat on top of my lunch box. He did that to trouble me. I felt irritated and scared. But luckily, not even a  piece of that meat fell into my lunch box. Because I always stop him from that. All I used to do during lunch time was to stop E from hanging the meat on my lunch box. Then, I won't have time to eat and I will go hungry. I wondered why E was not being kind and understanding. I never troubled him. I never bothered anyone who ate meat. I would only want to sit in a corner and quietly eat my food. But none of the boys let me eat food in school because they teased me and troubled me a lot. When I get back home, my Amma will be worried. E also used to pour juice on my food so that I could not eat it. One of my teachers whose name start with the letter 'U' forced me to eat donuts. In our home, we don't eat donuts and noodles. I told her that I don't want it. Then she tried to convince me by saying that the donuts is fresh. And, I had to run away.

When I talked to my Amma about how she managed being a vegetarian in America, she told me that ,in the US, people that she met were understanding. She told me that the guy who would prepare her sandwich in Quizno's sub and Subway will change his gloves as soon as he see my mother. Because, he must have used his hand to pick meat and other stuffs and he understood that my mom does not like it. My mom also told that people in the US that she met do not bother if she said she didn't like a particular food. My mom said that she had similar experiences in Australia and London too. When I asked my mom how come they understand, she said, "Over there, many people have learnt to appreciate and respect other people's individual choices, likes and preferences." But here in India, culturally, people only follow what they have been following since long time or follow what others have been following already, so it is difficult for many to understand people are different". In India, once my father told that in Dominos pizza, he asked for a personal pizza without onion and the waiter insisted that it needs to come with onion. I asked my mother if people in India will change, she asked me not to worry and said, "We can change, but it will take a long time for a culture to change and accept individual choices". She also said to me that change is inevitable and added that Bhagawad Gita says parivartan is the order of the Universe and it keeps happening. 'parivartan' means 'change'. She also said that I can also be a reason for change to happen. And she suggested that I can also learn to respect other people's individual choices and preferences without making them wrong, but be myself.  

My amma also told me that it would be wise for me to learn to cook that will help me lead a simple and frugal life. Not only that, she said it will also help me to cook healthy and nutritious food that I like to eat. So, she has been helping me to learn to cook food without adding onions, garlic, capsicum and tomato because I don't like them. I will share in my later posts, interesting and my favorite food we prepare at home without those 4 dreadful things.

--- S P. M