Mahmoud Mokhtar

The Meaty Story! Nobody writes, so far at least, that 'red meat is injurious to health' like they do on some other products. But for the last few years the doctors have been doing so in their way: telling patients or general people to avoid too much of red meat which or give it up altogether which they say, is not good for health, particularly for heart health. A whole lot of people, including us ordinary mortals, do follow the advice, some very religiously totally cutting out on that. We did not give it up totally, but our red meat-eating became sparse and very occasion-specific. For most of us in India red meat means 'mutton' or goat or sheep or lamp meat while some others had switched over to pork; although the latter variety had not obtained any certificate of 'eat' from the doctors to the best of my knowledge, but of course, the latter variety is much cheaper than mutton. I'd rather not talk about beef for the danger of getting politically incorrect. In our childhood days, however, things were not so health-oriented, and the doctors of that time did not do so much preaching about what to eat or not to eat. So, we normally used to have mutton for lunch on Sundays, and that was the day for us children to look forward to. Of course, at times rainy cold or winter nights were mouth-watering exceptions. Some people ate it more often as far as they could afford, because the price of mutton was higher than all others of its kind that time too. And it was a general belief, even