I remember reading an article many years ago, which
stated that most of the vegetarians are actually not vegetarians. A vegetarian is a person who consumes no animal
products, including milk. Going by this
definition, most of our traditional vegetarians, who consume milk and other
dairy products will fail to qualify as vegetarians. The article further stated that there are
four categories of people. First is the
pure vegetarians (who are very less in number).
Second is the vast majority of the so-called ‘vegetarians’, who consume
milk and milk products, who are actually lacto-vegans. The third category is lacto-ovo-vegans, who
consume milk products and eggs, but no fish and meat. And the last category is non-vegetarians. I belong to a lacto-vegan family. But my father and I were lacto-ovo-vegans.
When I was in college, one of my classmates got married. Her marriage was in a Church in her village, about 20 kilometers from Kochi. A group of us travelled to her village for the wedding. It was a small village and we had to walk almost a kilometer from the bus station, climbing a small hillock, on top of which the church was located. Enjoying the natural beauty, we climbed the hill. We noticed that there were no shops or establishments anywhere nearby. Some of us were already feeling hungry. When all the rituals of the wedding were over, we rushed to the dining hall and occupied the seats. When they started serving lunch, I realised that they only had one item – chicken biriyani. I was the only lacto-vegan in the group. All others were non-vegetarians. Hearing us discussing my problem, the bride’s brother told us that he would go to the kitchen and see if he could get any vegetarian food for me. After a while, he returned with disappointment saying nothing was available in the kitchen except the biriyani. He was very apologetic too.
I was extremely hungry. If I had decided not to eat, I would starve, because there were no restaurants nearby. One of my friends suggested a way out. He said, ‘I will get a plate of biriyani for you and carefully remove all chicken pieces from the biriyani. You can eat the remaining, if you don’t mind’. Though I was a lacto-vegan, since I always had many friends who were non-vegetarians, I didn’t have any aversion towards non-vegetarian food. So, I agreed. Thus, I ate ‘chicken-less chicken biriyani’ that day.
A new formula was invented: ‘Non-Veg – Non = Veg!’
