Do flowers find bliss in Ikebana? 

Are hooks, baits and sinkers a fish’s pride?

Are ice cream splits the thrill of banana? 

Do the trees seek solace in furnished wood?

Do sheep find comfort in woolen clothing?

Are captives fond of solitary hood?     

Are tigers and deers game for hunting?

Do turkeys in thanksgiving take pleasure?

Do lambs come tagged with a bribable price?

Are cows quite content in futile slaughter? 

Is anyone at ease with sacrifice?

Every human folly stirs a question

Yet none do covet the taste of reason.

                          (Excerpts from my book…..Daddy- A Bouquet of Memories)

        Our White House had many rooms but the most used space was the inner verandah where the breakfast, lunch and dinner was held. We had two dining tables. One was the new mica one which was placed inside the dining room and used mostly for parties. The second was an antique. Solid black and made of teak we called it The Round Table. This table had seen all..... dinner table conversations, post lunch sessions, nervous drumming of food caked fingers and even loud thumping of angry fists in our off hand Conferences. 

          One day I came home to my White House feeling sick. I slumped on the chair in our Round Table where the family lunch was still in progress. I had just returned after having tasted an ‘excruciating’ meal in the house of a friend of mine. I had seen my 'lunch' brought alive into the kitchen, kicking and fluttering. When finally the bird was brought to the dastarkhaan, dressed yet undressed, stuffed not only with undeveloped boiled chicken embryos but leavened bread and natural dried fruits as well, try as much as I could, I just was unable to digest the fact. You see, I was never used to the idea of being introduced to a shrieking lunch before. This had been the first of its kind.   

    'Daddy', my non-vegetarian heart asked, 'is there no way that we can eat only the dead animals? Why should we kill the live ones?'

   'No' he said, 'once the animal is dead, then the meat slowly starts to turn poisonous'.

   'But why do they torture the poor bird before killing it? Why not just kill it instantaneously?' 

   'You see, there is a scientific explanation for it', he said, 'if the animal or bird's neck is slit without damaging the spinal cord, the blood (which serves as a good culture medium for microorganisms) is completely drained off, thereby leaving the flesh free of clots. It further assures the freshness of the meat for a longer period of time'.

  'But don’t they feel any pain?' my vegetarian heart now asked.

  'No', he said, 'because this swift cutting ensures the disconnection of the flow of blood from the 'pain' nerves in the brain. When the bird flutters about, it is not out of pain but due to the contraction and relaxation of the muscles and due to the flow of the blood out of the body.'

   But even while my Daddy said these words, I saw before my eyes the sharp knife with which the father of the house had slit open the throat of the bird, with an air of nonchalance. And all the while the bird struggled, writhing and kicking the air, finally landing in a soft heap on the ground, with a glazed look on its beady innocent eyes. This look had haunted me so much that I went off chicken for the next two years.

    And even while my Daddy explained the science of eating fresh meat, I knew all along that his heart was as green in terms of the agony and ache of any living being, as mine was. Maybe that was the reason why our meats always came neatly 'dressed' into our kitchen, avoiding all the unpleasantness of the gory details that went into the snuffing off of a breath. What one did not witness was definitely less difficult to feel culpable about.

    Although Daddy was adept in all his scientific explanations, our White House was never once made the sacrificial altar on any occasion. And even though a lot of our community wizards thought otherwise- often swearing that the Gates of Paradise would refuse to open themselves for the un-sacrificial family that lived there, the purity of our White House was never ever tainted with the scarlet droplets of the harmless and the innocent.  Never in the name of faith! Never in the name of sacrifice!

    If it was only symbolic there were a million other ways to discover the road to Paradise, my Daddy said. No one raised their voice against him since he was the President of the Muslim Association and of the Jamia Mosque of Berhampur. Moreover it was useless talking to a man who always had glasses tinted with wisdom perched on his stubborn nose. Glasses that were often dyed with doubt, disillusionment and disbelief.

     No one dared to argue since Daddy was also an influential Muslim who had contacts with some of the top notch leaders of the country. And even if they sometimes found the courage to do so, it did not matter who shouted the most. What mattered was who spoke the last!

(In silent response to a few blogs that have recently been doing the rounds since Bakrid- some claiming to be informative and some viciously graphic. The silence when translated verbalizes a fact that irrationality should always be replaced with wisdom. And butchery whether in pretense of sacrifice or lust, in the name of religion or repression, of animals or of humans, is but a universal practice. It should be cured not endured).