I don’t know who India’s equivalent of Oprah is, but I’m sure this has been featured: the healthful effects of Navratri fasting rules.
Few things are more irritating (“might make you grouchy” my friend E. says) than traditional dietary practices of depth, subtle abstraction, intelligent symbolism and transcendence being given new, healthy, “life-style” meaning. Being retroactively rationalized, in short, into meaningless utilitarianism.
That Jews and Muslims don’t eat pig meat because “pigs are dirty” is probably the most ancient one. Because they’re not. Pigs actually have high self-hygeine practices compared to other domestic mammals and that’s generally attributed to their relatively high intelligence compared to other mammals. (I’m always tempted to think it’s just that pig meat tastes so good — like shellfish and wine — and banning its voluptuousness was just one of those random rules that monotheism needs to build its puritan edifice and get its rocks off*). The chicken whose steroid-bloated, skinless, grilled pec you’re eating lives in far filthier conditions and even in free range eats worms and its own feaces. Then there are the vegans who think that their diet and a Hindu’s vegetarianism come from the same impulse and have the same objective. If that were the case Indian vegetarian wouldn’t be so wildly delicious and vegan food so unswallowable. Or the male soy-dieter, wreaking havoc on his endocrinal system and flooding his body with estrogen, because Zen must have something to teach us about health. It does, just not that.
And then are those occasions when it’s spring and you explain to someone the guidelines for Orthodox, Lenten fasting (Because they’re guidelines, suggestions, not rules like in Catholicism.) “Oh,” inevitably comes the response, “that must have started as a wise way to cleanse your system for spring — and you must lose so much weight.” No. You don’t. You end up eating a ton of cheap carbs and sugars on the halva and lagana diet and on Easter you’re ten pounds fatter than you were at Carnival when you were gorging on fat and animal protein.
So “Jai Ganesh Deva”! Eat Navratri foods if you want and offer the right prasad. Pray that Sri Ganesh, in his wisdom, prevents any anti-Muslim violence — something a little more important than your anti-oxidant consumption — and skip the diet part.
* Don’t wear wool and cotton blends. “Thou shalt not round the corners of thy head.” “Thou shalt not seethe a kid in its mother’s milk.”
Huh? Not just the randomness of the injunction, but the obscurity of the language… What are these rules even dictating exactly? What are the corners of my head? Last time I looked my head was round already. Is it just the mother’s milk? Then why is all milk prohibited? And on that one weird line we construct a whole dietary culture and an entire constitution of domestic order that must be an insane expense of energy to maintain…
Off topic? Yeah, well…
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Jadde: from Bosnia to Bengal 
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