Beware of (only?) the meat

I have been both laughing and grimacing over the great meat scandal that has exploded over West Bengal during the last fortnight.

Here is my take on it. To start with, it would do Bengalis much good to eat less and eat better: look at the bulging bellies and behinds! This craze to eat out at the drop of a hat which has become endemic over my lifetime as the children of the ’80s and ’90s grew up is not good – not even in a country like the United States, where food safety standards are taken far more seriously by all and sundry. I remember my grandfather saying to me, only half in joke, in the early 1980s: ‘Dadabhai, avoid eating in restaurants, I hear they serve dog meat’. So I can’t say I am particularly surprised or horrified to hear that that, or worse, has been rampant of late, in high end restaurants and cheap roadside eateries alike, in Kolkata as well as in the small towns. This is India, after all, always has been, so why do so many behave as if it were ever otherwise?

First, the population has ballooned: there’s quite possibly far too little good quality food available at reasonable prices to supply the demand. Second, we as a nation – whether we are part of the government or the general public – hate stringent standards, because it cramps our ‘freedom’ to do as we like; we clamour for them only when there spreads a sudden (and transient) awareness that ‘others’ are making hay by flouting all kinds of rules. Third, we, virtually all of us these days, worship money like nothing else, and admire (or envy, which most of us consider the same thing) only those who have very quickly, and preferably with very little effort, made a big pile for themselves. Fourth, unemployment is rampant, and the great majority of honest jobs that are going around pay only a pittance. Given a conjunction of these factors, who pretends to be shocked, and why, that a lot of people will be tempted to take the primrose path to success, which always involves cheating people and hurting the common good? The fact, then, that such ‘scandals’ have become a dime a dozen should evoke only caution and despair, especially since as a society or nation we are determined not to take stern steps to end such antisocial ways to ‘success’ once and for all, or maybe secretly know that it is simply impossible.

And finally one cannot, no matter how high one raises one’s eyebrows at Didi’s penchant for smelling conspiracies, entirely dismiss the idea that there is political mischief afoot. Is it really a complete coincidence that this scandal broke virtually on the eve of the statewide panchayat elections, or that the media are giving it such shrill publicity (for what I think about them in general, scroll just a little bit down)? Let the meat-loving Bengali be warned, then, that food poisoning most commonly happens through fish, and that tomorrow another scandal may break over poisoned paneer, or that vegetables of all kinds are these days tainted with fertilizer, pesticides and weedicides which contain known carcinogenic agents. A doctor friend of mine got a virulent form of hepatitis after drinking scotch at one of the fanciest hotels in Kolkata, and later told me that it was probably from the ice: eateries, even the best of them, routinely cut costs by using industrial ice, or the sort of ice they pack fish with. And you are every sort of fool if you think you are safe because you live in Delhi or Bangalore. Eat less, eat healthy stuff, eat more at home, and be careful.

Last word of caution: be particularly careful of ‘branded’ eateries and caterers. If only because they have the biggest opportunity to cheat. Every canny Indian should know that your trust in big names is exactly what they commonly betray to get rich and stay rich.

P.S., May 14: Here is an article written in today's newspaper which might regale my Bengali readers.