Unaware?

Indifferent?

It was my last year at American University in Dubai. I had taken up Documentary Photography as an elective. Popular ideas that floated around the classroom were uncovering the world of fashion, life at the circus, shadowing a tattoo artist, and other cool experiences. These realms did not appeal to me. I wished to continue my research of studying the relationships between animals and humans that I had begun in Photo 3 class. To indulge my curiosity I chose meat production as my topic of exploration.

I must confess. Before my interactions with the animals on a personal level I used to eat meat. Why not? I grew up in a family, entrenched in a culture, in which consuming meat is a GOD given right. I never questioned it. Why would I?

Then something changed.

I became aware of the culture of over-consumption that threatens to overwhelm us all. Research ensued and the billions of animals that endure intense suffering every year to satisfy our gustatory experience were revealed. At first the statistics and written analysis, while damningly vast and comprehensive, did not crush me. The documentary films on the abusive excesses of the meat industry made the inhumane treatment a bit more real and a bit more devastating. However, the final veil that was dropped came with my first visit to the neighborhood slaughterhouse.

Gluttony.

While I cannot say that the animals were systematically tortured, abused, or ‘mishandled’ in any legal manner, what lay in front of me was terrifyingly awful. The killing was carried out for the purpose of supplying food, for certain. But to see an animal sandwiched in a steel machine, rotated alive, only to meet its inglorious end at the hands of flippant low paid laborer, brought it all into the clearest of perspectives. We don’t care about these creatures. They are less than us. They will never be us.

Appalled.

I lived ONE year completely off meat.

Why did I go back to eating meat? I have not forgotten my experience. How can I, when my camera and I were tainted with blood while documenting how a life was transformed into a packaged good to be eaten. It was not an easy return but inevitable as I saw all the wastage, suffering and the hungry demand for food when I returned to Pakistan. In Lahore, the majority of people do not have the luxury to choose what they would like to eat. Often they survive on very basic lentils and a plain slice of wheat bread (roti) for the day. They scour their surroundings for any tiny morsel of food. I felt selfish and ungrateful to be turning down food right before my eyes just because I did not wish to eat another living being. I took a reluctant bite of the chicken tikka sending a silent prayer of thanks to the poultry who had sacrificed its life to feed me and my family.

What had started off as simple curiosity had slowly sliced off my layers of ignorance and instilled in me values like gratitude and conservation. I no longer waste food. Throwing away food is like disregarding the life that was forfeited to feed us.