The Vegetarian Within Us All

Once I would have thought meat was a regular part of one's subsistence, so tasty and natural it is. It seemed a simple truth thinking that as beasts ourselves it is our rightful place to eat other animals. And yet one forgets that many animals don't eat meat at all. I noticed on Saturday, 25 June that we do not necessarily miss meat.

Me, Mark, and Hans in the back seat of a tuk-tuk
whizzing through traffic. 

We had packed our bags with toilet paper, medicine, and money for we were going to the city! We all needed to escape the terrifying diet imposed on us at the GMRT. Everyday of the week the GMRT has a different meal planned for us, in theory. And yet to the untrained tongue it all tastes the same. Not only does it taste the same, for that could be livable, but it looks the same.

Our diet is composed of coupons. We buy coupons from a booth and hand those coupons to the next guy in line. Then we grab a metal plate and shuffle down the line. First there is a bin of yellow goop, usually called dal, but it is not! There are no lentils in it! But it is yellow always, of soupy consistency and if you're lucky will find a carrot sliver inside. The next is rice and a cracker wafer, which tastes good, and it has structure (the cracker)! The next bin is a red goop with beans or lentils inside. This is followed by yogurt and a green mixture of bitter vegetables.

Chinese dinner on Mondays. It's the one break in an endless
sea of red and yellow mush.

This is the way it goes for lunch and dinner every single day except on Mondays! On Mondays they make a pale version of Chinese food (noodles, vegetable rice, odd pan fried vegetables), and red goop in case you want some of that again. On Wednesdays, if you ask the kitchen before noon for non-vegetarian food they will charges you three times the price and give you a tiny chicken thing but I have never ordered this.

I think this is a form of mental torture. If they feed us the exact same food everyday except on Monday then we grow to depend on Mondays. Then once we rely heavily upon Monday for our sanity they can manipulate us. I won't let this happen!

So on Saturday we all made a journey into Pune. We left at 07:05 on the GMRT shuttle bus. It is normally a 2 hour journey but today it turned out to be 3 hours. We arrived at the NCRA, where I had slept that one night on my way to the GMRT. There we ran into the Director, the man who had helped me retrieve my laptop.

A Food Bazaar is tiny in comparison to Walmart or Sobeys
and yet it was heaven on earth to find. That might be a little
too exaggerated, we weren't that desperate for better food right?

We had no clue of where to go for shopping and we were thinking of just renting a car for the day (3000 Rps perhaps!). He advised us to head by tuk-tuk to the Pune Central Mall, East Square Mall, and Ozone Mall. None of them were more than 4km away so taking a tuk-tuk was the best option by far. The six of us would fit into two tuk-tuks and the average price of a tuk-tuk is 11Rps per kilometer. So we ended up paying 120Rps. for two tuk-tuks to take us to Pune Central Mall, the largest of the malls.

It pales in comparison to a Canadian mall but it is the tabernacle of society in Pune, as all the cool rich kids hang out there. We all headed up to the top floor, for it was designed up, instead of out like the sprawling malls of Canada. On the top we found our true destination. Me and Mark found Smokey Joe's Pizza! At last we could have a crust on our bread! We ordered two large pizzas for 845Rps. Each was 30.48cm in diameter, one with pineapple, pork bacon, and pork sausage, and one with chicken, garlic, and pork bacon. It was a hefty price but worth it. All the insanity that the GMRT canteen had worked up within me seeped out as I enjoyed stuffing my face with pizza and drinking a coke (the first coke I'd had in years). But it was so refreshing! We saved half of each pizza for the next day at the GMRT.

Then we got down to business. Some people had to buy clothes, some people wanted to grocery shop, and some people wanted to lounge on couches and digest their pizza. And what's that?! The Miss India Beauty Pageant Tryouts to were about to take place? What splendid luck! It truly was going to be a glorious day.

Mark trying on clothes at Fab India.

The pizza wasn't sitting to well with us. We both each still had a stomach flu. Mine was just pittering out but Mark was only on the verge of his. He wasn't feeling too good and the bathrooms were out of service. We were fine really, it was more that our stomachs had recently shrunken and we had just over eaten by a lot.

So as everyone else hustled about shopping and purchasing we sat on couches and watched some guy spin a disk. The guy was to DJ while the girls got their strut on. He'd crank the volume too loud and the manager would come out yelling at him, not that we could hear him, we were on the second story looking down on them from above. It was very funny to observe, the guy would blast it again as soon as the manager disappeared. Eventually he just unplugged the DJ.

One of two nice restaurants near the GMRT.
The other is a wine bar! I''m going there tomorrow
after climbing the mountain!

We were getting kind of nervous. Where were the girls? I wanted to see the possible future Miss Indias'. I felt I had experience in the matter and perhaps could help the judges out. But they weren't supposed to start until 16:30! Noooo! What horrible luck, that was the exact time we had to be back at the NCRA for the bus ride back to the GMRT and we still had another mall to go to too.

Well we knew we were defeated so we decided it was time we got our asses up off the comfy seats and do some grocery shopping. We were on the market for something easily made. The only cooking device we had access to was a kettle. Microwaves are obviously forbidden on a radio wave telescope observatory. Your not even allowed to have a cell phone. So with only a kettle our options were limited. Instant noodles, cookies, oatmeal (with assorted additives), and things for our hygiene. This is what we got. The oats were actually one of my favorite buys. It has so much needed fiber, protein, starch, and combined with cashews, almonds, dates, raisins and haselnut spread made one tasty meal. And it only requires a kettle.

Later, we made our way to Ozone mall. It wasn't so much a mall as a department store with food. Not very big but enough variety that some of us bought more things. I bought a wooden brush for my hair.

Then we made a quick stop at Fab India, a fabulous fabric store. They sell cloths, bedding, dishes, candles and furniture, kind of an Indian Ikea.

Kobe Sizzlers Steak House. We each had a lemon-cream,
a tasty concoction of sprite and vanilla ice cream.

Our last destination of the day (it was drawing near 16:00) was Kobe Sizzlers Steak House. What, you might ask, a steak house in India? Yes, and this is where I made my realization that people don't necessarily require meat. Many Indian people are vegetarian, and those few that aren't tend to only eat chicken. And yet here they served a sacred animal, cow.

I was thinking that perhaps eating meat is just a way of signifying status. Or rather, perhaps excessive eating of meat, without regard for the origin of the meat, is what gives one a sense of status. In many cultures meat is ingrained into the cultural menu and I think that is perfectly fine because those cultures (traditionally, pre-modern era) raised the meat that they ate. The First People of North America were very spiritual and revered the animal that they would eat. It was treated as an equal.

There were a few people inside already. A family just sitting down to eat. The food they served here looked amazing. Great heaping plates of vegetables with a steak sizzling on top. Of course they served all sorts of meats from seafood to pork, chicken and finally beef. They also had a great vegetarian section including pizza and pasta.

Everyone ordered a lemon-cream (or lemon soda with ice cream) except Connie who ordered a sizzling steak. When it finally arrived it looked tasty. But she hardly touched it and in fact we had to help her eat it so that we could leave in time. It was surprising how little we actually wanted the meat when it was placed before us. Nidhi is a vegetarian and so she couldn't help, but Greg, Hans, Mark, and I did. It was very tasty which perhaps tells of why its so popular in developed countries.

Pune bridge.

On the way back to the NCRA we got stuck in traffic and had to walk part way and catch another tuk-tuk back. Our driver was stupid and took the wrong route (because he was afraid of getting caught without a license). We arrived just in time to catch the bus and arrived back at the GMRT at 19:30.

We packed our new food away and quickly fell asleep. Perhaps the stomach flu, in my case Cholera, still hadn't passed.

Overall a nice day.