Not Sacrificial Anymore

Eid was a very different experience this time. A kind of an aversion developed by the end of the festivities – towards meat, slaughter and blood!

To start with we had to do this recording for Atv (this was way before Eid by the way). The event was titled Meat Milan Party and the tagline was Aao Meat Karein! … Now that’s repulsive!! All offence to Atv! …

At the same time, I am quite aware of where all this is coming from:
There is a kinky side to Lahori sense of humor where we twist a few letters around in a word to create another meaning out of it, while the word sounds the same. These guys made meat out of meet!!???
So basically they transliterated ‘Let’s Meet’ to ‘Aao Meet Karein’ and then added the Lahori kink to make it ‘Aao Meat Karein’. But if we reverse engineer the transliteration, it will become (in English), ‘Let’s Do Meat!’ … ahem…

Let’s move on … …

A day before Eid I was walking inside my residential compound and I came across a bunch of goats (if anyone want to shoot a morality bullet at me, especially about me not having my own goats, for sacrifice, then go ahead… I have my bullet proof vest on these days).
It’s funny how, right when I passed by these goats, they stared at me and starting bleating. Somehow, I too was quite perceptive at that moment and could sense a lot of pain in their eyes. They were staring at me is if I was their long lost savior or something. Their cries increased as I moved away…
I had to divert myself… … not that I would have pulled off a saving act – Ali Noor does that stuff … I just regret not doing it later …

This staring and moaning happened all day into the night. The last call came from inside a locked garage as I was walking by. Even strange was the recollection, before going to bed, that these cries were more or less specifically towards me – as I had seen other people pass by the goats without getting a single call.

In bed I could see those eyes again, telling me:

… this is what you have come to … you feel this sense of pride that you are not me … that you are bigger, greater … I too was willing to accept that when you made the First Sacrifice … I respected you because you deserved the respect … today I stare at you as my equal, if not less … you can kill as many of me … but don’t you dare think that I will cover up for your wrongs … I don’t find you worth it anymore!

….

I slept at 10 a.m. on Eid day. Woke up at 1, got ready and went for lunch to my aunt’s place. I love her cooking… but she’s also grown old and now she has a whole platoon of kitchen workers (including her bahu’s)… so her own input has become more mental than physical… still it has always worked.

This time however, the food was too spicy! And even she confessed that this was a first time that they had to use a lot of spices to cook the meat properly, especially the liver… My cousin then made the remark: ‘Ab to Bakron ke bhi Jigar Kharab Honay Lagay!’

It might be a random chance event for any reasonable person; luck had it that we got a bad goat. But somehow the pieces were fitting in one after another…

I usually eat a lot at my aunt’s but I couldn’t digest the food (quite against my nature by the way as I am known to have a strong digestive system). I walked out. My eldest cousin followed suit and together we went for a long walk on the streets of Model Town.

Simultaneously, as if by coincidence, both of us started lamenting about the current state of affairs… and in that too, we went straight to the topic of religion, how it came about and how we ended up understanding of it…

I will skip through that discussion for now… maybe when I am 40 and far more educated on that front, and when people around me will be forced to become more open minded (forced because that’s where circumstances are taking us)… maybe then I will share all that openly…

For now, I will just conclude with the final piece in my Eid Puzzle…

On my way back from the walk, we passed by this house… where a good 50 or so people had queued up outside the gates. The gates were closed, yet we could see some six to eight cows hung on the porch ceiling. The driveway outside and the road across the gate were sticky, while the roadside was a blood swamp. The smell was intense – if I could give it (the smell) a feeling I would say it was painfully claustrophobic!

At once I remembered the scenes from Apocalypto; the human sacrifices taking place in front of thousands of onlookers, thirsty for blood … thirsty for deliverance!

Tags: Eid, Meat, Religion, Sacrifice