Omar Farooq is a final year undergrad business student at Forman Christian College. You can find him on Twitter @Omarfarooq_

 

I, the mutant specimen, was born into a meat devouring, red blooded Punjabi family.  It would be disingenuous of me to say that I do not like the taste of meat. As a matter of fact, I still crave for a juicy steak or chicken barbeque, the common belief that the smell of meat makes a vegetarian nauseate does not hold true in my case, on the contrary it makes me feel weak at the knees. Now that you know little my background you can appreciate my family’s outrage and disappointment when I told them I had decided to be a vegetarian. I had a coming out moment with my mother when I first professed my love for vegetables; her nonplussed reaction after few moments was, ‘but why?’  The most interesting reaction came from an aunty at a wedding when I was trying to avoid everything chicken and meat on the table, she said to my mother, ‘mein tay phelay keya se munday nu Christian college na paij’ (I told you, not to send your boy to a Christian college) verbatim. It has been six months but I still enjoy the first expressions of dubiety and disbelief when I tell someone that I am a vegetarian.  The incredulity later meets skepticism, some suggest a brewing existential crisis, I entrainment myself with the notion that maybe a change of car can alter my eating habits, others think that I have converted to Hinduism? I love when everything in Pakistan is attributed to religion from your eating habits to how one sits in the lavatory, when it comes to religion nothing is off the table, not even meat. Truth be told, it is rather hard to be a vegetarian in a country like Pakistan, for starters there is not much on the menu, your options are very limited. You will find yourself in awkward situations, especially at weddings and parties where everything has to be something-chicken e.g. chicken brayani, chicken karahi, chicken korma, chicken this, chicken that ad infinitum and if your guests are a little creative you just might find chicken-mutton. At moments like this one realizes what motivated Alanis Morissette to write ‘It’s like ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife’ ironic? I thought so.