Five things I like about being a vegetarian

You have been warned. The following post will include personal, graphic details that may unhinge your sensory perceptions. It contains details of the writer’s life that you probably….. no wait, definitely, can do without knowing. No seriously. Your life will be changed for the worse, or grosser by the knowledge of the following facts. 

Ok, so I was dropping the corn at work today (here, quit judging. It was the need of the hour, mostly because I needed to be as light weighted and relaxed as possible for the ensuing hours, because I had a presentation to do at class). My head was filled with things that I should be saying when I caught a whiff of what was being released. All I could think was ‘Oh Dear Lord Above, What in God’s good earth is that? I’m a horrible human being!!! I’m going to have to empty my perfume bottle in here! What has the next person to go to the loo done to receive this kind of treatment?  Call the Quarantine Squad” *shrieks inside head* 

Prelude

I had gone to a BBQ the night before with my girls and of course as with all BBQ, the menu included meat, meat and more meat. I’m usually a vegetarian but when I attend such functions as these, I ignore this fact. Why? mostly out of convenience. Sometimes when I’m the only vegetarian at a get- together and they have more meat & fish things on the menu, seeing me with an almost empty plate, makes the hosts uncomfortable. 

Picture me all huff and puff, refusing to eat anything because the hosts forgot or did not know of it. Rather than suffering endless ranting of “Can I please make an omelets for you? Soooo sorry about this/ Ayyo, you should have told me you were a vegetarian else I’d have made something noh? Here, you can’t eat cake or ice cream cuz they’re made of animal stuff, right?” I chose the option of just eating the dam thing without making a deal out of it. 

Why not? I’m not a vegetarian for religious reasons nor should I anticipate beheading if I do eat meat occasionally. I only refuse meat because I love animals and prefer if they do not have to die to keep me full and happy. Some of you will argue that the animal is already dead and that me eating animals will not help.  My retort to you can be summed up with a gesture of my third finger. 

That being said, I will not refuse a dish I have never, up to that point, had or something mouth wateringly delicious looking just because I don’t eat animals. 99% guilt free, I do enjoy it.

Others might say I’m fake and I’m a failure at being a vegetarian. Fake would be if I really really like it and still won’t go for it because of my ‘vegetarian’ label. Not fake would if I see it, I don’t like it and therefore I don’t eat it. 

Screw that. I gorged myself in all the types of meat. Only today, sitting on the loo contemplating, did I realize it that it was a poor case of judgment on my behalf.

A few reasons why being a vegetarian is nice.

1)      You’re poop won’t smell!

It’s true. I hadn’t had this much meat in this quantity in like, forever and the ensuing stench is, in one word out-of-this-world. My usual greeny poop very rarely smells. And even if it does, I assure you, it does not, I repeat, does not smell like a world abomination.

Reminds me of the Poo-Pourri clip on 9gag, attached here for your viewing pleasure .http://9gag.tv/v/1145

 

2)      A general light weighted disposition.

Another thing I’ve noticed, and vegetarians will agree is the feeling of light weightiness. A mostly veg meal as opposed to a meaty meal will take far less strain on digestion hence giving you that extra skip on your feet. 

3)      The calories

Here’s a topic that will attract the banal ‘ohmygod. I’m so fat’ folk. Over the years, I’ve noticed that being a vegetarian, my calorie intake is less which automatically reduces or keeps at constant, the weighing cubes. 

Eka kiwwa gaman don’t go to stop eating meat just because you want to stay slim. That’d be the stupidest thing I’d hear today. If you love eating meat, by all means, do so. If you are worried that you’re over weight, there are other ways to keep fit.

The way I see it and what I usually do is, I eat what I eat. (No seriously, I eat quite a lot of god-knows-what’s-out-there in what-quantities) Then confess and ask for forgiveness each morning. Then start eating all over again. :D

Do not read me wrong, I’m a vegetarian NOT because I wish to keep the calories at bay, far from it. It just so happens that, it’s just an additional point. Better yet, I can stuff myself with more of the food I love the most because like meat, it doesn’t fill you up so fast and therefore I am free to shove it down.

A tip to the banal I'm-fat-I-need-to-loose-weight-to-fit-that-dress, you have a choice not be the sama‘harak’ stereotypical type society wants you to be. You don’t have to be able to be this thin or that thin to be good looking. As long as you’re comfortable with your body and are able to carry it around without difficulty, it doesn’t matter what everyone else thinks. 

To me, the human body is the greatest tool we’ll ever possess, and we do wonders with it. Treating one’s own body with the respect it deserves and the discipline it requires in itself, is a virtue.

Something to keep in mind however is that if one is overweight and as a result finds it difficult to go by day-to-day activities and diet, then one might be concerned ( diabetes and cholesterol and heart diseases and shit) and would consider a more wiser healthier eating schedule.

Trust me when I say this, medical bills + old age are the shits. 

4)      The middle path

A wise man once said to leave 1/3 of your bundi space for digestion and that 2/3 is perfectly enough for a person to carry on their day to day activities. If we do fill the 1/3 it is pure gluttony and not necessity. Those who wish to follow a maddyama prathipadawa can look at it that way too. 

(Something else that I notice when talking about eating habits in the locale, (now that we’re in the topic) is the ‘bada pirenna nemei hitha pirenna’ theory. I see people eating pounds of rice replicating Ruwan valy saya’s. They can’t breathe, let alone move, budge or do anything after a lunch like that. Its completely fiiiiiiiiiine that you love stuffing yourself, I do too! But just not that efficient when you consider a work environment for example, is it?)

5)      You save a life

Well, don’t you? It’s nice to know that because you decided on something, someone else gets to live. It doesn’t happen in that order of course. Animals will be killed day after day after day. You will probably not be able to change that. It’s still nice to know that you cared enough to let go of something you liked because you thought of someone other than your own self.  That says something about yourself that words don’t really do justice for. (I'm not inferring that non vegetarians are self-centered neither am I inferring that vegetarians are the exact opposite.) 

If you are a vegetarian/vegan and you are reading this, I congratulate you for trying and succeeding in the art of self-discipline because I know how difficult it is to stop myself from refraining from some of the nice looking stuff.  (It is difficult at first, but then once you get used to it, you feel you’re better off without it)

Bien joue, to the times you had to deal with psychotic idiots who just loved to debate with you on how worthless your efforts are at doing something they think you have no say in. 

Finally, cheers! to living your life without depending on the death of another. (unless of course in a situation involving a crash landing on a lonely island where you only got deers and rabbits that you can survive on and you’re forced to eat meat for survival. Also in a zombie apocalypse where you could be a) a zombie living off people or b) a survivor who’d just about eat anything to stay alive, even the neighbor’s pet cat) 

Back to the cemetery

With Halloween within ear shot, and this whole talk about ghouls, geeps and ghosties, I’d like to brush up a little bit on the boarding platform to the graveyard i.e., the funeral. Which when you look at in perspective, is plays a vital role in the whole ‘I am dead and should have passed on to the afterlife but I am still here trying to scare your undies into a knot’ thing. 

Here in Sri Lanka, we've got several ways of making our last trip depending (mostly) on our religion, beliefs and all around bearings. There’s method a)  where we ‘go up in fiery blaze and have our ash collected in a jar and then there’s  b) where we ‘lie calmly under the earth for all eternity’.

A) Going up in a fiery blaze

B) Lying peacefully under cemetery shrubbery

To me, funerals are a messy affair. Firstly, there’s that whole thing of someone being dead, that usually bugs most folk but I, in particular get completely unhinged by the entire function. It had to be thanks to that one time in my early teen years (usually when most events leave a sort of scarring affect) that the unhinging effects of a funeral had left its emotional toll on me.

I don’t even remember the particulars but from what I recall, it had not been the most normal-est of funeral experiences for yours truly. Upon arriving at the three storied parlor, we made our way towards the coffin with glum expressions and solemn head noddings only to find that the body was not of the relation we thought had passed but of some random person who happened to have their funeral on the same day. ~awkward~ is what anybody would think but that’s not all.

Tragedy number two strikes on the same day even after we managed to locate the funeral we were supposed to be at, when I close in on the coffin to  pay my last respects. Apparently, one is supposed to stand next to the coffin and remember the good ol’ days and memories of the individual and send telepathic good vibes to the person or some such. Instead I involuntarily decide to trip on the carpet and tumble head over heels onto the coffin of afore mentioned dead individual. I didn’t fall in completely, but my upper torso was inside the coffin with above *cough* person. An aunty in the vicinity, who had seen my unintentional dive into the coffin, fished me out from the scruff of my neck.

Imagine trying your level best to eternally rest in peace and then having me fall on you in your death bed. Not the most pleasant of thoughts, trust me.

Getting back to the cemetery story. One thing we would all like to know from the curator at a cemetery is, that have they in fact, ever experienced any form of supernatural, unworldly entity during their time at the cemetery? Which is what I asked curator at the Dehiwala Public Cemetery. Sorry to have to disappoint you folks, but apparently that’s a negative. 

During his entire career as a cemetery keeper, not once in all his eleven years has he ever seen anything that opposes the theory that a graveyard holds nothing but lifeless corpses. Nope, nothing, nul, niche.  Not so much as a visage of an old granny walking amidst the graves looking for her missing cat. Folk who work there make up stories about giant black dogs, fog shadows and silhouettes of white sarongs of course. Which are pretty cool too, cuz everybody thinks it’s true coming out of the horse’s mouth, but  unfortunately for us, they are all made up. (There is an in-house dog at the cemetery too and perhaps she triggered the dog ghost idea. This doggie had followed her master to his final place of rest and never left.)

However there had been an incident that involved a late night culprit throwing stones that had occurred just the night before. Beggars and drug addicts sometimes take shelter inside the cemetery premises. The drug addicts are of course not welcome by the police who raid the cemetery to catch them.

The following descriptions might be a wee little disturbing for the faint of heart. And even to the newly deceased. Feelings of being violated may be felt. Nonetheless, it is all true.

At a cemetery during a funeral, you see the entire coffin disappear under a mound of earth right? Again, sorry to disappoint you but it is not the case. After a few days of every-grieving-one going home, the coffin is dug out again and the body is removed of its polythene wrapping for ease of decomposition. Under all the neat cloths you see worn by a dead body is a sheet of polythene that helps the lifeless body look pretty and rigid and keep the juices from not dripping everywhere during an open casket funeral. This sheet has to come off  if the body is to successfully decompose. The dudes at the cemetery (bless their brave souls and limbs) gotta dig it up, remove the polythene off the dead body, burn the polythene and put it back in. The wood rots away eventually and the body returns to where it belongs.

All this digging and burying also shifts everything underneath. Meaning, after some time the tomb stone you visit to put flowers or stand silently by probably has someone else’s dearly beloved underneath it. (Again, sorry to disappoint you. This is turning out to be an article of one disappointment after the other but come to think of it, what’s not disappointing about death, huh? Above is where we are taught the philosophical idea to ‘let go’ at least after one’s passing of physical beings comes in, but that’s a story for another time)

For the newly past tensed folk, there is also the threat of your ash being stolen after your body is burnt to a crisp for hooniyan purposes. Pirith pan is splashed over the ashes to prevent nasty relatives, annoyed siblings, or budale-not-written-to-me spouses from stealing your ash and cursing the smithereens out of your poor unfortunate soul which doesn’t even have the luxury or the peace of mind even after death. The cemetery makes certain that it does not happen. Only pre-informed well-wishers of the deceased get to take a jar of ashes home. So if any and all of the above mentioned three types comes sneaking in the dead of night to steal your ash offa the pit, sorryma thama, but blessed ashes will not do the trick.

Cremation happens unless in special cases such as court/criminal cases where the cemetery is by law prohibited from doing anything to the body, sometimes for decades until the court case is over so that if the body’s cause of death or whatever, needs to be reexamined and autopsied for new evidence etc, they can do so with only natural decomposition to tackle.

The curator was also kind enough to rid me of my fear of having eaten Mac Donald just before entering the cemetery. It is popular myth that one must not eat oily food or meat before entering the gates of the graves but the curator shrugged it off and admits to having fried chicken with lunch on that particular day itself. He as a principal doesn’t eat pork or beef  so I guess he wouldn’t know for certain if the myth is fact. The laborers however, gorge on whatever meat they please even inside the cemetery where their quarters are at.

Strolling down the endless rows of tomb stones, here are some things I learnt.

Cemetery 101

·         There is no such map or order of burial in the five and half acre land that is home to more than thousands of bodies since its inception in 1930 . To bury a body in the cemetery one must make a payment to the Municipal Council; Rs 510 if the individual is a resident inside the municipal boarders and Rs 2040 if not. For the dara saya or stack of wood for burning they charge something like Rs 3000.

·         In the days of yore, people were allowed to allocated and buy off plots of land for family burials paying only Rs 60 for the deed (that’s right, sixty rupees, we can’t even buy a potted plant, let alone an entire place for our lifeless bodies to rest) which is still valid by the way. (bit like eternal cemetery monopoly, me thinks). But now of course, people can’t buy land for personal burials from the cemetery (unless they buy it off someone else who already has dibs on cemetery plots. Funeral plots come with price tags of about four laks a plot i.e. a 6 by 5 feet area, mind you)

·         A body is not kept in the cemetery for more than one and a half years it seems (unless in special cases where they are asked not to lay a finger on it) but are moved to make room for the incoming residents. (They make special markings on that type of graves so that they don’t disturb it too much.)

·         To store ash jars at the cemetery there is a ‘wall of ash’ so to speak, arranged in three horizontal rows stacked one above the other where one can keep a picture of the deceased and the jar of ash. Each compartment going up for prices ranging from Rs 25,000, 35,000 and 45,000 onwards. People usually just take pictures of the picture and the jar stacked neatly next to all its new tenant buddies apparently. (Facebook cover pictures, anyone?)

'wall of ash'

A statue of a war veteran next to the wall of ash

With that being said, let me conclude my findings of the visit to the cemetery by sincerely apologizing for any dampening of hearts and feelings by any way of the lightheartedness of this article. I do not wish to disrespect anyone, living or dead, in any way. Just bracing us living folk by laying the facts in a simple, less depressing menu for easy digestion. After all, we’re talking death here. Might as well add a bit of cheeriness to the whole no-longer-living thing. 

Till next week, cheerios! Have hauntingly boooootiful week ahead!.

Far left corner is the cremation area

See the man bent over a pit? 

digging of graves 

That foot visible on the right edge is an actual foot of a living person. i.e. a laborer who was digging the earth. But in reality, they do unearth parts of dead people.  

A resident crow. I thought it looked quite ominous since crows are the messengers of the undead or some such. 

   

Flowers grown on top of tombs. I thought that was kinda cute. and thoughtful.
At least they planted some sort of tree. 

That there is not paranormal fog. It is but the smoke of a burning coffin.

A scary looking dead tree

The new vs the old. - The neighborhood around the cemetery consists of modern buildings with people who don't  much mind sharing scenaries with a cemetery. 

                                   

Creeping up on Halloween, the Sri Lankan way.

Leading up to All Hallow’s Eve on the 31^st , I’m wondering if I am the only one excited about dressing up as a creepy person? Wenne beh. This year, I hope to take on the look and feel of a nasty wart covered witch as opposed to last year’s blood drippy vampire. The dark sunken eyes, scaly skin tone, all black, long gnarly fingers with bloodied fingernails, the works. 

I will ride off into the moon with my wolf pack at my heels, cast a few spells, brew a dozen potions and stir up some havoc. People to scare, places to destroy, infants to eat.  
*evil witch cackle* 

I know Halloween isn’t celebrated here as it is in other countries, but that won’t stop some of us from getting on the festivities full-scale, right? Sri Lanka to me, is the hub of everything supernatural in Asia. We’ve got seducing handsome manly spirits, beautifully taunting women in white sarees who eat babies, an almost infinite number of demons and perethayas who are known for their co-existence with us, undead corpses that are woken up to wreck havoc, vicious women seeking revenge and kattadiyas or the exorcist who we give a shout-out for when we need to get rid of any and all of the above creepy folk. 

When we think of a Halloween themed Costume Party here, I have personally seen some very pathetic attempts of men dressing up to look like hairy women with buckets of lip paint and a ton of powder. As much as that, in itself gives me the creeps, it’s not very creative, is it? 

Following I have a list of some creepy personage right out of our local book of legends, explained in vivid detail so as to kick start your imagination to come up with your own unworldly wardrobe. 

Kalu Kumaraya

Taking after the name’s sake, this legendary “Dark Prince more-than Charming”, is the local form of an incubus. That’s a demon spirit that seduces people, only women in this case, into explicitly loosing themselves in the demon. Village nandammala warn and prohibit young girls wandering out after dark in fear of this sexy spirit enticing them into doing things that they would not do under sound of mind. I think it’s called hormones but whatever, it’s probably just an old wives tale. Or is it? 

Mala Mohini

This lady in white has been in pop culture for some time now. Dressed in a plain yet untidy white saree, she haunts lonely roads carrying an infant. If you see her, she will ask you to hold her baby while she adjusts her saree and when you do, that’s when, *sorry thama* she gets you. Some say if you were to take a closer look at her, you will see her eating the baby with blood drooling down her saree and intestines drooping down her chin. Nasty bit of work there but a shoe-in for a costume party nonetheless. 

(I wonder if you remember that advertisement of the wise young man who did not get caught to her wild, evil, womanly charms because he was an ardent reader of a popular local newspaper. I thought that was quite a bit of creative marketing right there. )

  Pilluwa

An undead corpse that has been woken up to commit heinous acts of crime against an enemy. The conjurer would select a corpse and give it life. Life not in its original form but just enough to reanimate the body and use it as a tool to wreck havoc. Decaying flesh, sunken eyes filled with pus and maggots, skin as pale as death itself, balding head, tattered and torn cloths, stiff body movements, stop me when you hear something you like.

Kinduri 

A pregnant woman expecting child birth had been brutally abused and killed. Course, like every horror, she didn’t stay dead. She now goes from house to house knocking on doors looking for the perpetrator. If you’re a woman, you’re safe. But if you’re a man opening the door to her knock, I’m sorry but she’ll probably kill you. It’s nothing personal. She just doesn’t like men anymore. 

Yakkas & prethayas 

When it comes to demons and devils, Sri Lankan myths and legends form the creepy icing on the cake. We practically co-exist and thrive off each other. Ruled under one King Wesamuni, these curators of hell, form a large, diverse community with various skills and an all-around hellish disposition. Once free to attack and eat humans at will, they have been restricted to only afflict diseases and suffering under the keen, watchful, multiple eyes of said Big Boss who has threatened them with not one, or two punishments but 32 in all including boiling, roasting, impaling, and pouring molten metal down the offender's throat etc. Assembling every Saturday and Wednesday at the yaksa sabhawa, they exchange their stories of gruesome acts and have a nice soiree of yaksha merry-making. 

Significant yakshayas and prethayas to inspire your wardrobe would be

·         Maha Sona – Guardian of the grave yards. Originally one of the ten giants of Kind Dutugamunu, he was defeated in a duel and had his head chopped off and replaced with that of a bear. His powers include death and illness on humans.  Usually seen in ‘prey mode’ in and around cemeteries, he keeps an eye, or several eyes out, for human prey. (Come to think of it, I’d be pretty pissed too if my head was replaced with a bear’s. Talk about adding insult to injury. And what about the poor bear? No one thought about its feeling, now did they?) 

Said to be 37 m tall, bear headed, armed with a pike, blood redden skin, with three eyes and four hands, he rides a pig while drinking the blood of an elephant he carries in his right hand. How do you know you’ve met him? A giant hand/paw shaped bruise between your shoulder blades cuz you’d just been slapped on the back by a bear-headed giant, that’s how. 

·         Reeri Yaka -  It is said that one can expect his visit when he is at his deathbed. You’ll know him when you see him. In his maru avatar state, he will look something close to a pygmy, body of a human and the head of a monkey, skin a fiery red, he’d stand by the dying man with a rooster on one hand, a club in the other, and the corpse of a man in his mouth. Picture perfect? Definitely.

His powers include afflicting illness. Hemorrhages and blood diseases are his specialty.

Last but not least, 

The kattadiya. - The dude everyone summons when they’ve encountered any of the above. 

Dressed usually in a white sarong and red coat type costume, you will notice him conducting the ritual, sacrificing chickens, dancing around the fire, breathing fire, talking in local filth to intimidate the entity out of the human host and casting inaudible incantations.

Traditional exorcisms such as the Sanni Yakuma ward off demons when a person is possed. The exorcism rituals itself is a long, elaborate, costly affair that involves dance items done by vibrantly dressed dancers, sometimes in masks depicting various demons and devils. The dancing itself is loosely connected to the Pahatharata dancing form and is accompanied by the dramatic beating of drums to create a truly exotic experience for the audience. A sacrifice is presented in exchange for the human to be released of the deadly clasp of the demon. 

So a costume that radiates fire and heat and repels demons would be spot-on. With maybe a fake human finger necklace around your neck. Rough and rumble cloths; baniyan and sarong for the men and an ominous hattei reddai for the women. There is no gender bias when it comes to costumes. (although I have noticed that our ghosts are a tiny bit gender biased. For example, mohini goes only after men while kalu kumaraya snatches the ladies. Personally, I’d feel discriminated and left-out, if it were me)  

Think as though there is no box. Go creepy with the costumes. 

(All this being said, I ask you to take caution if at all you are brave enough to impersonate any of the above. These are legends and myths for a reason. We don’t want to provoke any unworldly entity out there by intention or by chance. )

P.S. I did manage to visit the cemetery and chat up some folks there. Tune in for later issues this month if you want in on the findings. So long. And stay safe, away from dark alleys and lonely grave yards. Or not.