Live and let live

For the first time in her life, mom bit into a chicken sandwich today.

By accident, might I hasten to add, lest you do a double take.

Looking forward to a company luncheon, mom skipped post-breakfast, pre-lunch snacking at her desk and sat through long-winded speeches by movers and shakers of the company in the conference room, all the while eyeing the spread from Wildflower Bread Company on the table in the background.

She patiently stood in line, stoically bypassed the bags of potato chips, Coke cans and cheesecake slices and carefully selected a sandwich that certainly looked vegetarian with sprouts and salad leaves sticking out of it. She took one bite and bit into something chewy - almost paneer-like – only tasteless, and definitely lifeless.

Mom reacted as though she had found a finger in a bowl of sambhar at a restaurant. Not knowing where the restroom was located and not wanting to hunt for it with the offending material in her mouth, she threw mealtime etiquette aside and proceeded to dry heave into her paper towel in front of her co-workers.

Back in line again, this time, she did full justice to the potato chips and cheesecake. In fact, she spent the rest of the day ingesting anything she could lay her hands on to remove the meat after-taste in her mouth.

As an impressionable child, mom thought if she ate meat, the animal might somehow mysteriously come to life in her stomach and try to tear out of there. Remember the movie, Aliens?

Older (but not necessarily wiser), she now classifies meat in the same category as coffee, alcohol, cigarettes and karela: Consume at your own risk!