I kissed a cow and I didn't hate it

Workshop Coffee, Clerkenwell Road

Two weeks ago, I did something for the first time. I shouldn't have done it and I wouldn't have done it had I known what I was doing. It happened as an accident but the truth is still that I did it. And it may have been the best mistake I've ever made.

Get ready for a beefy story.

It was a temperate Thursday evening, midway through my stay in London. I finished my last meeting then walked a mile to a top-rated coffee shop and cafe that I simply could not let myself miss.

I entered the dimly lit establishment and gave the waitress my name. She recognized it. I was the one who had reserved a table for one. I was seated promptly and given a menu. Though I was really only there for a caffeinated beverage, we were at the part of the evening where the coffee shop became a restaurant, and food was my only vehicle to what promised to be a phenomenal flat white.

A quick gander at the menu was all I needed to know what I would be having: a salad with poached pear, goat cheese, grilled crostini and hazelnut dukkah.

I started scrawling an outline on a napkin while I waited for the waitress.

"Are you ready?" My waitress asked almost immediately.

"Oh, yes," I said opening up my menu again. "I'll have this one, the Bresa..." I trailed off, pointing to my selection. She nodded knowingly and left.

Ravenous, I went back to writing, slowly sipping on sparkling water to satiate myself while I waited.

Soon enough, the waitress returned with a generously portioned salad. I slid my decorated napkin aside, thanked her, and began to dig in.

My first bite was just pear. It was perfectly soft. Not mushy and not crunchy. Then came the goat cheese. Without warning, it melted in my mouth. The third bite was a goat cheese-smothered pear, peppered with hazelnut and wrapped in spinach leaves. I was in heaven and hadn't even ordered my coffee yet. It was only after swallowing my third bite that I noticed, garnishing the border of the plate, eight precisely-cut fuchsia circles. Like a food-obsessed labrador, I inhaled one, not without smearing it with goat cheese first.

Before taking my fifth bite, I paused. Suddenly reminded of the ingredients I read in the menu, I wondered what those circles were. I definitely read all the ingredients. What was that? Must be orchid petals or some other garnishing if it wasn't listed. It didn't taste bad to me, just different from anything I've eaten. Something best described as instinct kicked in. I saw a manager circling the dining area. "Excuse me?"

"Yes, can I help you?"

"Um, well, yeah. I ordered the pear salad, and I'm just wondering what this is," I asked, stabbing the flower-petal-thing with my fork.

"You didn't order the pear salad," he said. You ordered the Bresaola Salad." 

"Oh, I thought that was the title of it. But the ingredients were pear, goat cheese..." 

"...And bresaola."

"What is that?"

"Bresaola, it's a salted, cured beef." I froze staring at the plate. The once beautiful flower petals now taunted me with their machine-cut perfection.

"Oh my god. I can't eat this. I'm vegetarian. I...I'm so sorry."

"This is a common mistake. Don't worry. I understand. I'll take your plate and bring you a menu." He walked away leaving me in terror as I spastically gargled my mouth with sparkling water. What is going to happen to me? Am I going to get sick? I hope I get sick. I deserve it. I hadn't done it on purpose, but I wanted to be punished. I considered going to the bathroom to vomit. But I didn't know how to induce it.

I ended up ordering a very vegetarian quinoa salad with autumn vegetables. I scarfed it down, barely chewing, in case there were beef-remnants in my teeth. I did order a coffee, and though it was sinfully delicious, it tasted to me only like sin. I paid and rushed out soon after.

Walking home, I continually replayed the events of the meal in my mind, wondering how I had made such a mistake. 

Nandi at British Museum

I, a lifelong Hindu vegetarian, ate beef.

The guilt was a heavy one. Though I hadn't done it on purpose, though I truly hadn't known, I was angry at myself. Angry at my stupidity (am I the only one who didn't know bresaola?). Angry that it hadn't tasted bad. Angry that I didn't quite know why I was angry.

Twenty-four hours later, I found myself at the British Museum, still thinking about the episode but wanting desperately to forget it. After circling the lobby, I arbitrarily entered a room. I hadn't walked more than five steps when I looked up to see, staring back at me, a huge stone sculpture of Nandi, the Hindu sacred bull. 

I didn't move. It knows. It really knows. There was something eerily magical about it. 

***

I've always been vegetarian. I've also never considered becoming non-vegetarian. I guess you could say that because I've never tried it, I don't know what I'm "missing." It's not like giving up something that you love. It's just my status quo. 

For most of my life, stating I was vegetarian was like stating my phone number. When I was a child, it was a fact that my parents had taught me to memorize and I never questioned it. My young friends never questioned it either, probably because their schema told them that Indians didn't eat meat. 

It was only once I went to college, when I started to meet people who renounced meat for health and environmental reasons that I, for the first time, found myself needing to explain my vegetarianism.

"Oh, I've just never had a choice. My mom is a vegetarian so she made my family vegetarian." I often even went so far as to congratulate new vegetarians for their sacrifice. "It's easy for me. I don't even know what I'm missing."

Older still, I started to search for a more sophisticated answer. After all, not all Indians are vegetarian and I ached for a stronger, less imposed reason. Finally, I decided that some stricter Hindus were vegetarian because they believe in reincarnation and didn't want to be reborn as animals that could be eaten (note: this is wrong). I don't know how or why I came up with this, but I was happy with the culturally poetic nature of it.

At some point, I decided that I should probably validate the "teachings" that I was so liberally spreading. Toward the end of college, I asked my mom why we were vegetarian. "I assume it's because of reincarnation and..."

"No, that's not true at all. That's not why you are vegetarian. It comes from a belief of non-violence. We don't want to harm these animals or consume the spirit of an unnatural death. We wouldn't want to harm ourselves in the way those animals are harmed."

The reasoning for my vegetarianism was being forced onto me like the vegetarianism itself. Some accepted reasoning was supposed to be my reasoning. Well, I decided I didn't like this reasoning. I went back to telling people I was just vegetarian because my mom was. 

***

For many days after my accidental beef consumption, I reflected on my feelings around it. I decided that though it didn't taste bad to me, I still don't want to eat meat. My meals are entirely satisfying and nutritional without it. I don't need it. Still I struggled to form a concrete personal reasoning behind my vegetarianism. Beyond my mom's reasoning or my own fears of not being able to digest it or psychologically consume it after not having done so all my life.

Earlier this week, still undecided, I read about the science behind magical thinking. Studies have shown that magical thoughts are not reserved for children, despite what we adults may tell ourselves. We all act in ways that suggest, to some extent, a belief in magic. Magical thinking is evolutionary adaptive, having helped our species determine which actions we should and shouldn't take.

The concept of magical thinking solved it for me. I don't need a fully scientific reason. My instinct, my emotions, the aura of the statue were reason enough:

When every meal comes with a conscious consideration of what I can and cannot consume, when I think about myself in the context of other lives, vegetarianism gives my life meaning. It makes me feel like I'm part of something bigger than the moment's reality, and perhaps reality itself. It makes me feel like I'm part of something magical.

*** 

Our decisions (or others' decisions for us) define our lives. But these decisions do not need to be definitive. Every once in a while, whether by accident or on purpose, don't be afraid to test the waters and question the parts of your life you have always taken as unquestioned fact. However, just because you're asking questions, don't feel pressured to come up with sound, scientific answers. Sometimes your gut will guide you (this was literally the case for me). And as long as your decisions make sense to you, as long as you want to believe their truthiness and you feel fulfilled by them, you won't feel the need to convince yourself -- or others -- of some cock and bull explanation.