Beauty

I was all alone at home yesterday. and I have not gone out anywhere since the start of winter. every weekend, I used to spend the entire stretch of 48 hours inside the house without even opening the windows. My record is staying indoors for 72 straight hours :)

So I decided to break my monotony and go out. And what better place would there be than a botanical garden - a place where I can see spring rushing in and pushing winter out !!! Winter in these regions is quite depressing for people - especially if it was a "snowy" one. The trees are all bare with no leaves or flowers; the birds become silent and it is dull, white and dreary everywhere. And so when spring arrives - it is like the birth of a new day; the trees are covered with beautiful flowers, the birds start chirping, the climate warms up allowing people to shed their heavy woollen coats. So people really enjoy spring and I decided to take part in their celebration.

To tell the truth, I was a bit early to the garden. Most of the trees are still bare with winter trying desperately to maintain its hold. Only yesterday did it look like spring is finally getting the upper hand. But some trees and plants were early starters. There is this tree in front of my house, that is now totally covered with beautiful white flowers. And this contrasts nicely with the red bricks of the building behind. I caught the NY city subway to Brooklyn botanical garden and went inside. I was initially greeted by nothing but bare trees on either side of a walkway. I started wondering if I had done a mistake by going there at this time of the year. But my doubts disappeared after going round a bend. There, in front of me were half-a-dozen cheery trees all in full blossom. Here, during spring time, most of the plants first produce flowers and only then start growing fresh leaves. I guess this is nature's way of utilizing the spring season to its maximum and ensuring that pollination is completed early and new plants start growing ASAP.

Then I came across a small pond with small rocks on its banks. And there were these small turtles standing on these rocks. Even they were in pairs - probably enjoying the spring. There were beautiful ducks, some crow-like birds with bluish neck and giant squirrels (they are really giants compared to the ones found in Chennai). Then there were these flaming yellow flowers. And the blazing sun did its part to make the flaming yellow to flame even more.

And there are these group of trees just outside the botanical garden. They are totally covered in white flowers. There must be lakhs of flowers in that group alone. The flowers are so dense and there is no a single green leaf anywhere. Wow !!! what a sight !!! And this is just beside a very busy road - Have we ever seen like this !!!


I then boarded the train back home and when I was nearing NY downtown, I thought "Why shouldn't I take a small walk on the NY riverside?". And this short walk turned out to be a 2-hour one. As you would know, NY downtown is called the economic capital of the world and is full of skyscrapers bustling with activity. And behind all this hustle-bustle, lies a small oasis of beauty. They have set aside a paved walkway along the banks of the Hudson river behind the buildings for enjoying the beauty of nature and to forget all gadgets and gizmos inside the walls of the surrounding buildings. And across the river is the state of New Jersey. The sun was setting behind the state making the buildings stand out as tall dark silhouettes against the sky. The sky was a beautiful collage of colours of different hues and shades. Every now and then, the sun's rays would reflect on the glass exteriors of the buildings, giving a sparkling effect. The statue of liberty, Ellis island, Staten island, Brooklyn were visible in the distance. There were all sorts of people around - people skating on roller skates, cycling, walking their dogs, young and old couples walking hand-in-hand (with younger ones kissing every now and then), solitary guys/gals sitting on the numerous benches listening to music/reading books/working on laptops, tourists trying to the take in the magnificence of the sunset, guys with their fishing rods set in the water, parents pushing their kids in prams, groups of kids runnig around, a dedicated photographer with his camera mounted on a tripod hoping to capture all of this beauty in his lens ... And I really was angry with myself for not taking my ipod with me then. There is nothing like soaking yourself in this beauty and enjoy some melodious music. The batteries in my camera were also getting weak. I had to switch-off the cam for a few minutes in order to take a photo. But anyways I managed to capture things as much as possible.



On my way back, I was thinking if there are any such places in Chennai. What would I do if I need to go on a trip like this? For the greenery, we have the guindy park, the theosophical society and so on. But having a evergreen forest makes them less colourful since we do not have the fall-spring cycle of the deciduous forests. But then what about the water? Is beach the only option - And even that is crowded. Then I thought - Chennai has 2 rivers and a few canals too. How nice will it be if I can walk along the banks of the Cooum/Adayar river, probably stand on its banks in Saidapet and see the buildings of T.Nagar across or watch the early morning sunrise over the mouth of the river at the Bay of Bengal !!! Probably we can have our local flowers - Red/pink/white Arali, Yellow flowered thoongu moonji trees, red/pink/rose/white/yellow shades of hibiscus, white nandiyavettai, green money plants lining the banks. Throw in some local attractions - pattani sundal, molagai bajji, boiled groundnuts. And the result - Hudson river is no match. But it all remains wishful thinking :(:(:(

Hmmm... Anyways, here is the link to more of the photos that I took: http://picasaweb.google.com/vijayvmail/BrooklynBotanicalGardenRiotOfColours
http://picasaweb.google.com/vijayvmail/ManhattanRiversideWalk

Indian English

Recently I read in Wikipedia that India has the highest English speaking population in this world - around 325 million, followed by US at 250 million. UK comes fifth in the list. China comes third(but there is a note saying that this is the no. of English users and not speakers) followed by Nigeria. English is an official language in India whereas it is not in UK and USA (They are defacto official but has not been declared)

There is a distinct English variety called "Indian English" (I've seen this option on one installation of Red hat Linux). But all along I've been thinking that my English is not so very different from the English of the Brits. But this article proved me wrong. There seems to be a huge difference between the two. And the grammar that we are taught in schools are supposed to be archaic in UK (supposed to more specifically Scottish English) - result of our prescribed books being Wren & Martin and the likes that were written in the late 1800s. Here are some excerpts :

1. Legacy of the East India Company and its practices still prevails in all official correspondence in India। Official letters continue to include phrases like "please do the needful" and "you will be intimated shortly".
2. British writers who made creative (and comical) use of now obsolete forms of colloquial English, such as P.G. Wodehouse and Thomas Hardy, are still popular in India. It is ironic that although British writers Enid Blyton, P.G. Wodehouse, and Agatha Christie are now considered to have held racist views in their time, their books remain immensely popular in India. British writer, journalist and wit Malcolm Muggeridge once joked that थे last Englishman would be an Indian.
   
3. Schools still teach grammar from (frequently older) British textbooks like Wren & Martin or J. C. Nesfield (1898): the grammar of higher British English is considered the only correct one. Efforts by the Oxford University Press to publish a dictionary of Indian English were an abject failure since customers in India preferred the 'proper' British dictionary.

Few things specific to Indian English:

1. Usage of "out of hundred" instead of per cent: "He got hundred out of hundred" instead of "He got a hundred" or "He got a one hundred per cent".
2. "Your good name please?": "What is your name?", carryover from Hindi expression "Shubh-naam", literally meaning "auspicious name".
3. "Out of station" to mean "out of town".
4. "send it across" instead of "send it over", as in "send the bill across to me" instead of "send the bill over to me".
5. "back" replacing "ago" when talking about elapsed time, as in "I met him five years back" rather than "I met him five years ago." (Though this too is not uncommon in British English)
6. "freak out" is meant to have fun, as in "let's go to the party and freak out."
7. "pass out" is meant to graduate, as in "I passed out of the university in 1995."
8. "go for a toss" is meant to go haywire or to flop, as in "my plans went for a toss when it started raining heavily."
9. "funny" is meant to replace not only "odd"/"strange" but "rude"/"precocious"/"impolite" as well. "That man was acting really funny with me, so I gave him a piece of my mind"
10. "on the anvil" is used often in the Indian press to mean something is about to appear or happen. For example, a headline might read "New roads on the anvil".
11. "tight slap" to mean "hard slap".
12. Use of Respected Sir while starting a formal letter instead of Dear Sir. Again, such letters are ended with non-standard greetings, such as "Yours respectfully", or "Yours obediently", rather than the standard "Yours sincerely/faithfully/truly".
13. The phrase of 'the concerned person' is widely used in oral Indian English
14. 'A child was born of wed lock' in Indian English has the opposite meaning of its English origin. (I really don't know what the opposite meaning is)
15. "cent per cent" means "100 per cent" as in "He got cent per cent in maths."
16. "centum" is also frequently used to refer to 100.
17. "Metro" to mean large city (i.e. 'metros such as Delhi and Bangalore') This is a shortening of the term Metropolis. This can be confusing for Europeans, who tend to use the word to describe underground urban rail networks.
18. Use of the word "shift" to indicate "move", as in "When are you shifting?" (instead of "When are you moving?").
19. Batchmate or batch-mate (Not classmate, but a schoolmate of the same grade)
20. Eve teasing (catcalling - harassment of women)
21. Foot overbridge (bridge meant for pedestrians)
22. "pass-out" to "graduate from college"

I really didn't know that our speech is so distinct from others. This is so cool!!! I like it.

For more info, here's the link : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_English

Perspectives

An instructor in one of my company organized training programs used to say: "There is no right way or no wrong way. There are just different ways of doing things".

Though I really didn't like that instructor very much, this line just stayed with me. Whenever someone says/does something that I don't fully agree with, these lines automatically pop into my head. This makes it very difficult for me to get angry with someone - even if I should get angry.

Coming to the main topic here, I recently came across a blog in my company intranet. It is about how a team successfully endured a number of obstacles and took a project to completion. I've known people from that project (my current manager is one). That project was notorious for its loss making bid and a bad estimation. Its members used to continuously stay all night in office. If on any day they manage to leave by 10:00 pm, then its an achievement.

So this blog goes on about how the project people sacrificed a number of things for the project.

"Mr.A, a team lead had an eye infection and was not able to drive to the office for couple of days. He asked team members to email the source code, so that he can review the same from home and send the feedback to the team. He had to stay at on-site for few extra days to cover another associate on vacation though his wife was expecting him back home urgently as their baby was due anytime – Incidentally, when he returned back from on-site, he had to directly drive to the hospital from the airport to see his just-born baby."

Mr.B, the data conversion lead on the project was blessed with twins just few weeks before the project went live. This did not stop from being completely available and work throughout during the entire conversion week-end along with the rest of the team who was waiting for the momentous occasion for 3 years.

Mr.C proved his versatility when he took the challenge of uncharted territory of CVS for code merge/branching etc – He showed the true company spirit of continuing to be involved even when he had health issues and in hospital while at on-site.


I thought: Whats the big point of being onsite, earning a 5/6 digit salary, having a car, house and what not, if you cannot be with your wife during child birth or when you cannot even look after yourself? Is it really worth it?

These things are quite common in developing economies like India. There's whole lot of things that happening in the country. Jobs are very few compared to the demand, so there is always someone to replace you and work even harder. And there's lot of competition around and companies just keep increasing the load of their employees to stay competitive. The result - the individual loses his grip over his personal life.

It is just the perspective of the concerned person. I personally want to have a balance between the personal and official life. Putting in more work at a crunch time is fine. But it should not always be a crunch time.

I've seen some who are really charged up for their company. They will do everything possible to benefit the company. They will be ready to sacrifice their personal life for the company. So, in their eyes, whatever that blog said is really a great thing. They would actually expect everyone to be like that.

So everything in this world is perspective. It is each individual's perspective of things that decide their actions. And conflicts arise when the perspectives and consequently the expectations/views of two individuals do not match.

Thinking from both angles of a situation, I usually can't really say that either one of the views is right/wrong. This attitude sometimes confuses me a lot. whenever I feel angry or when I feel something is wrong, I immediately start thinking more from the other person's point of view. And most of the times, whatever bothered me no longer seems wrong. I don't think this actually is a good thing. It becomes really difficult to get things done - It just makes me too soft. Assume I'm standing in a billing counter in a shop and the sales person is so busy with so many people pulling him/her in different directions. I will then refrain from asking him/her anything till they are somewhat free. There are instances where I've just stood there for more than 15 minutes waiting for them. On the other hand, there will be someone else, who will just walk in and demand attention. And they will get all the needed attention whenever they walk in through the door. But I on the other hand, end up being taken for granted - because the people there know that I won't say anything and that they can afford to take some liberty with me.

And because of this attitude, I'm considered too much of a moderate. My cousins call me 'truly secular' for my beliefs that everyone has a right to practice/propagate their religions. Sometimes I even go to the extremes of justifying Jihad or any such thing (Definitely not the killings, but their anger). So am I an extremist from that perspective? I have this terrible habit of finding flaws in my own beliefs - vegetarianism, Hinduism etc. When I think of some idea, I also think of what points an opponent would put forward for that idea. And suddenly I find my idea weakening.

Is this good/bad ? Again, its matter of perspective.

Has mankind become more barbaric?

Everyday we hear around us, someone saying "The world has become sooo bad. People are not good anymore. Voilence, murder, wars have increased. The world is about to end..." or something like that. We hear this all round the world. I don't want to say anything about the 'doomsday' forecast of the world coming to an end. But whenever I hear something like this, I start thinking - Has mankind really become more barbarian? Have our moral values deteroirated?

Looking at the history of Mankind (yes, I know I'm again talking about history), I don't really think so. Right from the time we evolved into modern day homo sapiens, barbarism, violence and cruelty has been a part of our genetic imprints. Whenever a group of Humans moved into a new land, it was common for them to clash with the original inhabitants of the area. Either one would survive the clash.

Right from the ancient times, we can find several instances of barbarism:

1. The cruel pharos of Egypt who proclaimed themselves to be gods and just obliterated anyone who opposed them.
2. The cruel roman emperors who just mass murdered their own subjects. One classic example is the emperor Nero, who was a psycho path and just went about killing his own people and family.
3. The barbaric Germaninc tribes of northern Europe who went on a rampage across Europe and challenged Rome.
4. The cruel and Barbaric Vikings who for more than a century spread terror across large parts of British Isles and Ireland. By 1000 A.D they even reached North America and establish some settlements there.
5. The harsh regimes of Aztecs and Mayas, who were busy Killing each other in the New world, while others were busy doing the same in the old world.
6. By the time the Viking invasions ended, there were huge number of soldiers across Europe who had taken up arms to repel the Vikings. Suddenly they were left jobless and could not stay put. So they resorted to terrorozing the local population.
7. Now it was the turn of the Roman catholic church to take up the reigns of terror. They launched the Crusade wars again the middle east and the orthodox christians of Eastern Europe. They plundered and ravaged the cities that were in their way. No one cared about the value of human life. A total of 9 crusades were launched resulting in a loss of thousands of lives.
8. Asia saw the barbaric acts of the Mongols under Chengiz khan, huns and many others.
9. Then came the Renaissance in Europe. The new worlds were discovered and thus began an age of exploration and discovery(also colonisation and exploitation). Wherever they went the Europeans brought a reign of terror and destruction. The spaniards literally obliterated the indegenious poulation of the americas. The french, british, germans, portugese and others took up the same task in Asia and Africa. Their atrocities in Africa has made a huge impact on the African continent from which it is yet to emerge.
10. The period also saw some atrocities by the Muslim rules of the Indian sub-continent like some rulers of the slave dynasty, mughal emperor Aurangazeb and other invaders like Nadir shah who plundered Indian cities following the decline of the Mughal empire.
11. The period also saw mass plundering and exploitation of the people of europe themselves by the rules of France, the Czars of Russia and others.
12. Then finally came the world wars, the marked the height of barbarism. Millions perished.
13. The period after the world wars saw a number of proxy wars.
14. A new form of violence has emerged - terrorism. That is going to see another round of barbarism.

So as we can see, no where in the history was there a period of relative peace and never did man exhibit any high sense of morality and respect for his fellow being. Every one and then, a great person came along and tried to harness the good side of mankind. Though they seemed to bring mankind to its senses for some short periods of time, we invariably slid back to our violent ways.It has always been a period of violence followed by a period of calm and peace brought on by some benevolent ruler, religious head or someone like that.

But what makes the current age more deadly is the technological advancement that we've made in our methods of warfare. We now possess bombs and weapons capable of destroying the entire planet. But if Nero or the vikings or the huns had these technologies they would have definetely caused the same damage.
So it is technology that has made the current age seem more deadly. Man himself is always the same, seeking to prevail over others, subdue his fellow beings and consolidate 'power'. Maybe mankind will merge into one unified race, only in the wake of an all-out attack by some alien race - Remember the movie 'Independence day'. Yeah -something like that.

Why is Africa like this?

I had always liked reading about the world history and Geographies. And in recent times, Wikipedia has really helped me in this. God, how I like Wikipedia (there’ll be a separate blog on that!). In the past 1 year (probably even more than that), I’ve read about almost every single country in this world. Wikipedia gives the history, geography, politics, current events, economy etc of every country.

And as everyone would know, none of the countries in Africa are in a good state. And I’m sure this is the impression about Africa in the minds of every single non-African. I used to think a lot on what actually went wrong in Africa and why are they suffering like this. The countries of Asia and South America were also colonized and exploited, but we seem to doing much better than the Africans. Reading and thinking about this, I realize that there are host of reasons that have caused this devastations.

Geography

Africa has a highly varied geography – the dense fertile Congo rain forests, the central highlands, the dry Kalahari Desert, fertile Nile delta and also the harsh Sahara. And a majority of this is really inhospitable. And this has isolated much of interior Africa from the rest of the world thus giving it the name ‘Dark continent’. So the people did not really catch on the advancements of the outside world. The interior of Africa remained mostly nomadic and is still is like that in many countries. This is totally against the modern way of living.

There did exist powerful kingdoms like the kingdom of Benin, but they were still backward compared to the colonial powers.

Paper Partition

When the European powers started colonizing Africa, they really did not care about the culture of the people living there. The African race was just considered so inferior that they didn’t even think of treating them of normal humans. Large number of blacks was exported as slaves and they were just treated as animals. They were portrayed as being equal to monkeys. There were lots of zoos in Europe and Americas, where the Africans were displayed along with the chimps in cages. The last human zoo was in Germany as late as 1958.

So the European powers met somewhere in Europe (Antwerp I guess) and had a map of Africa in front of them, and drew out the borders of colonies and divided the continent among themselves. Many of these borders were just straight lines; cutting across areas inhabited a people of a single tribe, thus effectively dividing them. And these borders remained after independence. So many of the existing borders are not based on the tribes, religion, language or anything, but just lines drawn in paper by some European power in some European city.

The best example is the case of Tutsi and Hutu people inhabiting the regions of current day Rwanda and Uganda. These people are divided among these countries. While they are a majority in one country, they are minority in other. This was also used by the colonial power to divide and rule them. That animosity developed by the colonial power has now led to decades of civil war including the notorious Rwandan genocide.

Human Development

African countries ranks last in the World wide Human Development Index. This again is fallout of imperialism. Unlike in Asia where the local population was trained at least to do the clerical administrative jobs, the African population was largely neglected by the imperial powers. Large number of whites settled down in the African colonies to take care of governance and to exploit Africa’s natural resources. And when the countries got independent, many of them left for their motherlands. With the majority of Africans also not having any sort of education, there was a huge knowledge vacuum in many of the newly independent African countries. And as a result, there was no big leader of any sorts available to guide the nations. And the big warlords and criminals took over the governments paving way for civil wars, genocides etc.

At the time the African countries became independent, i.e. by the 1960s there was just one university in the whole of North and West Africa. Such was the pathetic state of affairs.

Cold War

Most African colonies gained independence when the cold war was at its height. Their economies were too nascent and vulnerable and totally lacked any infrastructure. And many countries did not have any leader with a proper vision. Also these countries were rich in important natural resources. So obviously they caught the attention of the two super powers. In order to control the natural resources, they started installing puppet regimes in many countries, which just gave the super powers all access to the resources, while denying the locals even the basic necessities. The super powers even supported such fanatics and maniacs like Idi Amin, just to propagate the cold war. The result – Anarchy, civil war, genocide and stripping of natural resources.

Many of the governments were supported by huge aids provided by the super powers. And when the cold war ended, the aid was abruptly stopped and the governments were left in the dark and the economies started crumbling.

Agriculture

The colonial powers created plantations in many parts of Africa, often supplanting the local crops. They created plantations of mainly cash crops like Coffee, rubber, cashews etc. And this practice continued even after independence. The new governments did not give much importance to food crops and invested more on the cash crops. Plus many countries were concentrating on just one or two varieties. So when the prices of those particular cash crops fell in the international market or when there is a drought or famine, the economies fell. During times of drought, the food crop production was not enough to support the population and there arose huge famines crippling the economies further.

Natural resources

The rich natural resources of Africa are both a boon and a bane of this continent. So far it has mainly been a curse. The governments do not have the infrastructure or the money to exploit these natural resources. So they are compelled to let foreign governments and large corporate to do the job. These external agencies resort to bribery, illegal funding of civil wars & rebel groups etc in order to gain control of the natural mines and to exploit the people there. Many of the corrupt governments also support this in exchange for arms. And in the process all the natural resources are just exported overseas with little benefit to the local population.

And in addition to all these, there are other things like tropical diseases, AIDS, nomadic lifestyles of the people unsuited to modern development etc. that are continuously keeping Africa down.

Blood diamonds

This weekend I had gone to a movie called "Blood Diamonds" with Leonardo Di Caprio in the lead. The story is set in the small West African nation, Sierra Leonne. The country has been experiencing a 10 year old civil war that started around 1991. The war is waged by a rebel group called Revolutionary United Front (RUF). These people are so ruthless and cruel. Their main aim is to control the huge diamond reserves of the country. They raid entire villages, abduct the small girls, boys and some men. The rest were cruelly killed. Millions of poor people were amputated. The theory is that democracy survives through voting by hand and so hands were just chopped off to discourage voting. Other body parts were also mutilated.

The story is about an African fisherman whose family is ripped apart by these RUF rebels. He is taken to work in a diamond mine. His daughter and wife are taken as refugees to neighbouring country Guinea. His young son is captured to serve in the child army. The fisherman sets out to track his family. Leonardo di caprio is a diamond smuggler. The fisherman finds a huge diamond in the mines and hides it. Dicaprio helps the fisherman in his search for his family in return for the diamond. They travel through the country surviving the RUF atrocities.

The movie was really voilent. But most of what they show is not too much of an exagerration. I've been reading about these blood diamonds for quite sometime now and I've read quite a few disturbing accounts of the RUF.

The RUF control the diamond mines of the country. They use these diamonds to buy arms to fund the civil war. They do not have any people oriented agenda, plans or anything. Their only aim is to fill their own pockets. They were being supported by the gangster president of the neighbouring country Liberia.

Poor people are abducted from the villages and taken to Diamond mines to look for diamonds. Diamonds occur in places like river beds. The miners have seive, keep filling it with river water and see if any diamond gets caught in the seive. If anyone is caught stealing the diamonds, they are just shot. So these diamonds are just worthless stones to the poor people.

The children are kidnapped and the young boys are inducted into the children's army. There they are tortured and hardened and handed machine guns and trained to become ruthless killers. They are whipped and beaten. One account claims that the rebels rubbed Cocaine on the children's wounds to make them maniacs. Further they are hooked on to drugs to insenstise them to the brutality.

On the whole the rebel camps become a totally cultureless, ruthless place filled with children drinking, smoking, doping and gambling. They just move about the villages armed with machine guns, machetes in open jeeps and loud rauchous music. Villagers are caught, women and girls raped, shot and tortured.

The international arena just turned a blind eye for more than 8 years and just continued to buy these illegal diamonds. In fact many diamond companies funded the rebels in exchange for the diamonds. Then starting from 1998, the UN started sending peacekeeping missions and finally the RUF was quashed by 2002. The diamond industry met in Antwerp and adopted a resolution to stop trading in Blood diamonds. Also they created a diamond certification agency that will certify all legitimate diamonds.

Now for past 4 years, Sierra leonne has been at relative peace. But as long as the needs of the people are not taken care of, there will always be the danger of the country sliding back to anarchy.

Vegetarianism

I frankly don't understand how the non-veg ppl can talk of animal conservation. Think of the amount of animals being killed every day. The no. of burger, sandwiches that BK, Mcdonalds and others make. I guess Billions of animals are slaughtered around the world in a year. Yet these ppl talk of not killing other animals. So if animal population is more, that animal will not have pain, does not need comfort, freedom, sanitation or anything. So they will happily butcher a snow leopard if its population is same as pigs or lambs. And the way these animals are stored when they are alive !!! horrible.

In one of the 'Everybody Loves Raymond' TV series, Raymond and his family go to his brother's in-law's place for Thanksgiving. Suddenly a pigeon hits itself against the window and gets badly hurt. So his mother-in-law takes the bird in, finds that it is in acute pain and so just kills it to relieve it of its misery. Seeing this, Ray and his parents get so angry and call their family 'savages' and argue how they can kill a life like that and so on. A big fight ensues. Then the mother-in-law brings in the thanksgiving turkey and at the sight of food, all hostilities are forgotten and all is well. It is just a humourous scene. But What an irony !!! Ppl who care for a pigeon and fight because someone put it out of its misery, are so happy to kill and eat a much larger bird. I guess, they don't even realize that these are animals. I think it will be like different things : Food and animals. Chicken , pigs etc are food and the rest are animals. I remember the Tom and Jerry cartoons, where when Tom sees a small duck / chicken, the live bird will appear as a hot plate of steaming food in its eyes. I think it will be the same for these ppl. When they see a Hen or a turkey, immediately deep roasted chicken wings or a steamed turkey will probably cross their minds .

Ideally I'll support those ppl who make it a point to eat only dead plant food, like veggies/ fruits that fall down from the plants naturally. I remember the girl, Hugh Grant tries to date in the movie 'Nottinghill'. She tells that she is one such person. That way we don't even kill the plants. But living like that is very difficult. Probably that will be the same argument of a non-vegetarian.

However hard I think, I'm not able to think of a concrete argument that will justify vegetarianism and also prove non-vegetarianism as wrong. We do kill plants as they kill animals. Probably I can say the following (But I am also able to produce counter arguments for each of my argument):

• It has not been fully proved that plants feel pain -- But plants do have safety mechanisms, like thorns, repelling poisonous chemicals etc. We eat the plants only after overcoming these defences.
• The condition in which the plants are grown is much better than the conditions in which animals are grown. This I feel is somewhat a valid point, though the growth of many plants is being manipulated by man.

This is the link in Wikipedia about Vegetarianism:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetarianism

These are some points I liked on that page:

• Vegetarians in Europe used to be called "Pythagoreans",[1][2] after the philosopher Pythagoras and his followers, who abstained from meat in the 6Th century BC. These people followed a vegetarian diet for nutritional and ethical reasons. According to the Roman poet Ovid, Pythagoras said: "As long as Man continues to be the ruthless destroyer of lower living beings he will never know health or peace. For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seed of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love."
• Many Hindu scriptures advocate vegetarian diet. The secular literature of Tirukural (circa. 100-300 AD) advocates vegetarianism. (I didn't know Thiruvalluvar talked about these things)
• Vegetarian societies (apart from India) were first formed in majority meat-eating European countries both as a means to promote the diet and to gather together vegetarians for mutual support. By 2000, most Western and developing nations had functioning vegetarian societies. The countries that were first to establish societies are still the ones most likely to have the greatest proportion of vegetarians within their populations.
• Today, Indian vegetarians, primarily lacto vegetarians, are estimated to make up more than 70% of the world's vegetarians. They make up 20 to 30% of the population in India, while occasional meat-eaters make up another 30%.
• The majority of the world's vegetarians, statistics wise, are Hindu. Hinduism and Jainism teach vegetarianism as moral conduct while Christianity and Islam generally do not.
• Islam allows some consumption of meat; this meat is known as "halal", and this meat is slaughtered by the Islamic standards, and disallowed meat is haram, which is non permitted meat or meat not slaughtered according to Islam's standards. Islam accepts the ritualistic animal slaughter done by Jews, known as shechita. (Hebrew)" Islam also excludes the consumption of pork (pig meat). Muslim vegetarians are very rare as the consumption of meat is intertwined with religious sacrificing of animals (namely caprids, bovines and camels) in Eid ul-Adha. Moreover, in Islamic jurisprudence, it is wrong to forbid what is not forbidden. When travelling to locations where it is difficult to get halal meat, Muslims eat fish instead or eat only vegetables.
• According to the United Nations Population Fund "Each U.S. citizen consumes an average of 260 lb. of meat per year, the world's highest rate. That is about 1.5 times the industrial world average, three times the East Asian average, and 40 times the average in Bangladesh."(Think of the number of animals killed )

So Basically, India is the most vegetarian country in the world. A recent survey (Hindu-CNN poll) has concluded that more than 40% of the country's population is vegetarian. This is really huge, considering our population.