The Coming Out Story of an Insecure Vegetarian
The World Food Prize Foundation has done a lot for me and as unlikely as it may sound, it helped me gain the confidence to come out as gay to my friends and family. I met amazing people at the Global Youth Institute and heard incredible speakers who gave me the confidence to go home and be comfortable with who I am. Although I came out once to my friends and family, life in a heteronormative world is a continuous process of coming out. I have come to realize that being a vegetarian comes with a similar process. Someone invites you over to their house for dinner and all they have is something made with meat. That is when you're forced to have that dreaded conversation. “Sorry I can’t eat that, I’m a vegetarian.” Then the internal crisis starts where you feel like you shouldn’t have to apologize for who you are, but you don’t want to be a burden either. Being a vegetarian is a constant process of coming out to the people who care about you the most and not knowing how they will react. Although people should not be cruel because of someone’s sexuality they can be and in the same way people should not be hateful simply because of someone’s dietary choices, they can be. That’s a fear you have to live with every time you tell someone you care about one of those deeply personal things about yourself.
For a long time, I have gone back and forth from eating a vegetarian diet to not, simply because of the way a lot of people treated me and the limited access to healthy vegetarian food. I felt like it was a bad thing to be a vegetarian and I hated all the questions I would get as to why I eat that way. That was until I came to India. India has empowered me and gave me the confidence to eat the way I want to. There is so much beautiful and delicious food here in India and a lot of it is vegetarian. I never get interrogated about the way I eat or fear someone will think differently of me simply because I am a vegetarian. I think one of the things I will miss most about India is how easy it is for me to get food when I am out somewhere. I can go out to almost any restaurant and order from 20 different things that are healthy and vegetarian; in the US there would normally only be 2 or 3 and they may not even be very healthy. I will also miss how kind people are when it comes to sharing food and the amazing vegetarian meals Ram the cook at S M Sehgal Foundation makes every day.
What we choose to eat can be a deeply personal event for some people. I think that more people should stop and think about their food before they eat it; where it comes from, the process it took to get to you, and what it really means for you to be eating it at all. I have been sharing these moments with the farmers of India and they have allowed me to create an even closer connection with my food. They have shared their food with me, shown me where they grow it. They have shared with me their struggles and their triumphs. These will be some of my most cherished memories and I will be forever grateful for how inviting the farmers of Mewat have been to me.
