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- Denis Giles
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Maneka Sanjay Gandhi
When I was growing up in army cantonments, meat was on our table every day. It was taken for granted that military men ate meat because they were “real” men. In my grandfather’s house all the women were vegetarian, but he had to have his meat at both meals and the vegetarian women cooked it for him. When I became vegetarian, I had to listen to any number of men yapping on about how they avoided “ghasphoos”. I’ve never heard this nonsense from a woman.
Read more: Earth is Even More Threatened Than Your Fragile Male Egos
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- Denis Giles
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- Maneka Sanjay Gandhi
The legacy of milk drinking has not come to us from Krishna or the Vedas – nowhere in any of sacred texts does anyone drink milk – but from the British. Rabid milk drinkers, they brought this culture into India, started the first dairy farms and promoted it widely. Then our own governments, filled with people who had aped the West for so long, carried on this advertising and gave it a religious connotation (it is not the holy cow but holy milk), filled it with virtues like calcium and protein, and promoted it as an essential food for children to have at least 3 times a day. But does milk deserve its halo as a food that “does a body good.”
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- Denis Giles
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Maneka Sanjay Gandhi
What is Maya? Narada Muni wanted the answer so he meditated for decades until Vishnu appeared. "Come", the god said, "let us walk and I will tell you what Maya is". They walked on the hot sands of the desert and soon they were tired, dusty and thirsty. Then Vishnu pointed at a small hamlet and said, "Narada, please get me some water". Narada knocked on the first door and a girl of beauty and grace opened it. "Come in, my lord", she said. He entered to a welcoming family who gave him food and water and he stayed for months until he asked for the girl’s hand. He married her and had three children. 12 years passed and suddenly there was a flash flood that destroyed the village. Narada took his three children and wife and tried to get out of the high swirling waters. But they were swept away and he found himself alone. He sat in the ruins of his life and cried bitterly. And then he heard the distant voice of Vishnu calling, "Narada, I’ve been waiting half an hour ! Where is my water ?" And then Narada realised that everything was a dream.
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- Denis Giles
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Maneka Sanjay Gandhi
I am reading A Curious History of Food and Drink, by Ian Crofton, and the more I read the sadder I get. It is a compilation of such savagery, such insane greed for destruction, such insensitivity, that I wonder what an alien reading it would think of us humans.
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- Denis Giles
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Maneka Sanjay Gandhi
When Indian elephants meet African elephants, they recognise that they are both elephants. So do Indian tigers meeting Siberian ones. But I have great difficulty recognising that I am of the same species as a person who attends a Wildfoods festival in New Zealand to drink shots of bull and horse semen taken fresh from animals that have had humans masturbate these animals.