converting vegetarians

I remember battling with this.

For animals, for suffering? Ma (for I am her most obedient sheep) would suck her breath through her teeth, muttering across the table from me as I guiltily nibbled on unctuous keema-mattar. Blood! Stinking rotten carcass. While wandering through the village she'd up a lamb, clasping the wriggling, baying creature to her chest and smile at me. Look, your lovely leg of mutton! But even the smallest sheep can stray. I finally learnt to shrug, to become immune to the graphic imagery. How can you draw this line for animals? Closest to human beings? What about heads of carrots and heads of lettuce and eyes of potatoes? Tomatoes you'd watch growing, and pick to squish between your teeth.

For my insides? I could feel better, cleaner. But I could also collapse of anemia, going out to inky blackness and head buzzing in grand swooning spells. I was pieced together by lamp chops and steak, pork soup and sliced fish noodles. My stomach liked the animals swimming around it in, more than the nauseating iron pills. Another stop.

And then there's J, newest acquaintance. (For you can never really be friends with a Buddhist right? Just hope to be slot into brief pockets of time)

For sustainability. Every meal is a series of questions: fish skin? (maybe) Roe? (possibly) Salmon (never, especially not norwegian). My leftover chicken dumpling? Yes. Because otherwise I would throw it away.

As simple as that.

Nothing violently shoved in your face, no discomfiting thoughts of suffering livestock or pools of blood or heart attacks, as important as those all are. Just a belief in a sustainable way of life, and a real move to support it.

When my cousin was five his well meaning, and in my opinion idiotic public school teacher asked his class what their "family motto" was. His cherubic face absorbed all the idiotic answers that the question befitted, and when it was his turn he said, lisping through his esses, We only kill what we can eat.