Wearing a shield and ignoring the signs.

I am torn between my pampered taste buds and my self righteous, "do-the-right-thing" syndrome afflicted pseudo philanthropic heart. Bad news has always been a fast traveler, but now in this globally and digitally shrunk world it has grown more feet. Whenever I dare to inadvertently wander into the environment section of any news portal, I find myself bracing in the face of bad if not worse news. There is this invisible shield that helps me think if I ignore the signs, it will go away. Guess what...it ain't working. Half of the world's coral reefs have disappeared, Cows are being fed beef in their food and we now have the mad cow disease (who wouldn't go mad if they were fed their own kind ? ), global pollution is at an all time high, fuel resources are rapidly declining and now a ghastly prediction that sea food will be gone by 2048. Thats 40 yrs from now!!! We might soon have to move the fishes from the aquarium to the museum.

Now this isn't a "global disasters for dummies" tutorial, just a "fan the burn and soothe it" session. This is where I come in. Everyone who knows me will tell you how much of a food lover I am. I don't eat a lot, but what I eat, I enjoy. I relish. (I can see some heads nodding in wholesale agreement right now; my wife being the leader of that camp.) I have always gobbled down well cooked chicken and fish and although I have never had the courage to see the chicken being slaughtered, (coz i fear my appetite for meat will fall prey to that sight and I may never enjoy a juicy poultry meal again) my hunger pangs have always been followed with pangs of pity for the poor bird. Recently a very good veggie friend of mine reminded me of the error of my ways by giving me pamphlet which detailed the merciless and unfathomable treatment meted out to these birds before being decapitated. (If I were a chicken amongst the 100's in a 4 square feet wide coup, I would WANT to be picked when the menacing butcher comes with a machete in his hand.) As an aftermath of that "facts on your face" experience, I turned over a new leaf (pun intended). I decided to be a veggie at least 2 weekdays a week. I have been following that pretty religiously since. Its no laudable achievement I know, but it helps me feel like a responsible individual who is reading the obvious signs that nature is throwing at us and obeying it. If every carnivorous homo sapien on earth did that, we probably wont have to move the fishes into a museum anytime soon. There are many out there who feel the same and I am a part of that scattered few. This post is attempt to go out on a limb and hopefully inspire someone to join the "scattered few" and very soon make us an army.

This is the truce between my taste buds and a rebelling heart. I still need that shield when I read the news, but I not guilty of ignoring the signs anymore.