Curry-Eating Friends

My grandmother lives a clean life. She does not kill any animal—not intentionally—but she is not a vegetarian. She refuses to kill fish that my father brings home from his fishing trips. She also forbids anyone to harm the free-range chickens that she raises for eggs.

One time my father had his drinking buddies over to celebrate the weekend. They wanted to have chicken curry with their whiskey. The men chased the chicken around the house. When my grandmother found out that the party was about to cook her chicken, she said politely to my father’s guests, “If you are going to kill my chicken, just don’t do it in my backyard, okay?” My father’s friends knew what she meant. They took the chicken to a neighbor’s house and brought it back as chicken curry. Grandmother had chicken curry for dinner.

Grandmother is convinced that my father's multiple injuries and deformities are a result of harming animals. In his prime, my father hunted both for fun and for food. When he came home with baskets of fishes, frogs, and snails, my mother and grandmother left them out in a bowl without water. After awhile the fish stopped jumping. Once they became quiet, my mother and grandmother cleaned them. My mother said that they died from a lack of water. Nobody killed them.

One thing my grandmother insists upon is not eating beef. “How can I eat my old friend?” she asked me one day. “Cows are my friends. Without them I would not be here, and you would not be here, either. Cows worked hard on our farm. I talked to them nicely when I wanted them to work. I even saw them cry.”

[Jip wrote this about ten years ago.]