9/12/08 Eid ul-Azha, or Eating my own body weight in meat

Today was Eid ul-Azha, or Korbani Eid, which roughly translates as slaughtering or sacrificial Eid. It’s linked to that episode where God or Allah (depending on which version of the story you subscribe to) asks Abraham or Ibrahim to sacrifice his most beloved son, Isaac, and right before he goes through with it, an animal is substituted in Isaac’s place.

Anyway, whatever the back story, the central focus of Eid ul-Azha, aside from a whole bunch of praying, is butchery. Sadly (or not, perhaps), I didn’t witness a single slaughter, compared to Ollie’s two. But I did see a whole lot of carcasses, blood and dismembered body parts. And I did eat a hell of a lot of meat.

For the past week, Ollie and I have been fielding invitations left, right and centre, to spend Eid with various different people, and our social calendar was chocka with visits all over Parbatipur. Because of all the butchering, the logical conclusion of this is that there is also a lot of eating. And I mean A LOT. So I’ll break it down meal by meal, to give you an idea of my day.

1. I ate breakfast with Meena, my landlady, while her family was out at namaj, or prayers, (this was a bit of a sore point for me, as I was desperate to watch the prayers, which happen in a huge field, with lots of celebration afterwards, but my genitalia apparently excluded me from attending). Anyway, breakfast was a delicious milky sweet concoction made with noodles, eaten with rice flour ruti, and then some pulao (rice cooked with oil) and beef.

2. Then, I went to GBK’s director’s family home with Ollie, Sarah (our GBK counterpart) and her husband and niece, as they are all Christian so weren’t celebrating at home. We took a 45-minute rickshaw ride through beautiful, quiet countryside that was all mud huts and paddy fields. This idyll was, however, interspersed with groups of villagers surrounding bloody, gradually dismembered cow carcasses. It was a bizarre sight, to see men tearing out internal organs or hacking through spinal columns at five minute intervals (I will upload some photos as soon as I can). There, we ate more misti with rice-flour bread.

3. About an hour later, we were called back from our repose for lunch. This was possibly the freshest beef I have ever eaten – literally two hours before it had been mooing in the yard. And, sorry cow, but it was delicious! Again, it was served with pulao, vegetables and ruti.

4. After some rest, we jumped back on the van and headed back into town. From there, Ollie and I went to another colleague, Alam’s house. I could hardly walk from all the food I’d consumed, so had to refuse the offer of more beef. But Alam-bhai insisted I ate some rice pudding, which was delicious.

5. Next, I headed home to spend some more time with Meena and her family. For the previous few days, I’d been kept awake by the bleating of a goat in the front yard of my building. Now the goat was no longer in the yard, but in a huge cooking pot. And, again, it just tasted so good! I ate a plate of goat meat, with yet more pulao, but at least Meena relented when I told her I really could not eat another thing.

6. I allowed myself a ten-minute lie down before dragging myself round to Ollie’s, where we had long ago promised Helal that we’d eat dinner at his uncle’s house. When they whipped the lids of several huge pots of goat, beef, pulao and vegetables, my stomach actually heaved at the thought of putting more food in it. But I couldn’t refuse to eat without appearing rude, so I ate. Again.

Six meals of pure meat later, my concerns about developing a protein deficiency were firmly laid to rest. I don’t know that I’ll ever be hungry again. The only problem is, I’ve already accepted invitations to lunch and dinner tomorrow…