An year since I turned vegetarian

It was exactly an year before today that I switched to vegetarianism. People who knew me were not entirely surprised given my liking for Gandhian principles but they kept on asking me as to why I did that. They put forth several possible reasons why I took that decision. I didn't say yes, neither did I say no. So why did I take that decision?

There are several reasons one can come out with for supporting vegetarianism. I can cite a few here. One plain and proven fact is that vegetarian foods are healthier than non-vegetarian foods. Vegetarian food is also much lighter on the digestive system and leads to much smoother digestive processes. It has been said that humans are more adapted to eat vegetarian food than non-vegetarian food. Interestingly vegetarian food is also much cheaper than non-vegetarian food.

There is also one not-so-obvious benefit to vegetarianism. Vegetarian foods exert much lesser pressure on the environment than non-vegetarian food. Pound for pound, calorie for calorie, vegetarian foods require much lesser area of cultivation, much lesser environmental resources than non-vegetarian food. The per acre output of vegetarian foods are much higher than that for non-vegetarian foods.

The pressure exerted by non-vegetarianism is not limited to land but also to aquatic ecosystems too. A news report that came out recently in the news papers indicated that human pressure on the biodiversity in the oceans through excessive fishing has brought several species of fish to irrecoverable levels.

Given a choice I would stick to this environmental pressure advantage of vegetarian foods as my favorite. But none of these were the real reason why I shifted to vegetarianism. Not that these did not affect my decision making. They did, but the one main reason was my abhorrence to smoking and drinking (alcohol).

Some of my friends have had taken to the habit of consuming alcohol, and some others smoking, some to pan, and some to combinations of these. I have always been a big opponent of both these habits. I have always fought against these habits because of the obvious reason of them being unhealthy and the not so obvious reason for my loathe to these because of the way these substances affect human psyche.

Alcohol consumption results in a decrease in a persons control over his rational self. Smoking results in a uncontrollable dependence on tobacco to maintain normal life and additionally to control the persons psychological sensations of sadness, happiness, fear etc. I feel that both these are acts of surrender of ones rational self. This is the aspect that I totally dislike about these habits.

Of course these habits also increases the probability of an earlier death to a person addicted or used to these habits. Earlier than it otherwise would have been if they had not been used to these habits. I have seen highly educated people take to these habits in spite of knowing this danger. I guess it is like mountaineering for these people. Mountaineering, like smoking and drinking, increases the probability of an earlier death, for the people engaged in that. Only difference would be that the moment you stop the hobby the probability vanishes while it doesn't for these habits.

It was during last December that I had another set of heated discussions with a few of my friends to persuade them to stop these habits. As usual I couldn't make them change their decisions. I realized then that, I probably did not really feel how these guys felt, having to stop something that they like, and, having no real reason to stop, other than the risk factor I mentioned before, which they had probably decided to accept.

This is where Gandhiji's principle of Satyagraha influenced my decision making. Gandhiji always took to renouncing things that he liked as a way of coercing his opponents into agreeing to his terms or as a way of teaching people around him the values and principles like his fast at the Tolstoy farm as a penance for the children's mistake. There is another of Gandhiji's findings that I would like to cite as an influencing factor for my decision. It is his conclusion that control over food is the first step to control over will.

So I had to give up something that I liked and something that I would have to struggle to give up. That is where I came up with this idea about giving up non-vegetarianism. So en-route to a hotel to have a massive non-vegetarian dinner I announced my decision to my friends without citing the reason. I had to eat non-vegetarian food that night as my cousin with whom I was staying was caught unawares but since then I have stayed clean.

I did not announce the reason why I took the decision because I did not know how long I would be able to stick to the decision. Like my other experiments with my life this is a work in progress as I am never sure when I will fail in this pursuit or when I will change my decision. For an year I have held on to this decision. I had a tough time initially resisting the temptation but now I think I have got used to it. The smell of fish is probably the only thing that still tempts me.

Interestingly two other people in my family have taken to vegetarianism recently for their own reasons. One is my sister who took to it around 3 years back and another is my cousin Thomas(Appu) who took to it a few days before I did.