by Lakshmi Swami

Created on: December 18, 2009

I encountered this problem several times while travelling long distances. I travel to my country quite often. I always mentioned that the category of food I would like to eat is Asian vegetarian. Unfortunately every time I was given the wrong food.

 Eating vegetarian food is not my option but traditional compulsion. I could never eat meat. None in my family eats. I wonder why they don’t take boiled vegetables and serve in the planes!

I can’t manage eating even vegetarian food sitting beside a passenger eating Non vegetarian. Now I am used to even that habit because of the necessity. Sometimes I get food and the air hostess calls it vegetarian but it is just cold bread with some grass which she calls salad.

Once I was travelling to Hawaii with my daughter and her family. My son-in-law was also with me. It was time for dinner as it was late evening. The air hostess brought food and served food to my son-in-law who was sitting beside me. His food was non vegetarian. He said that he would manage. When she was giving me the same type, I told her that I don’t eat non veg.

She came back and told me that there was no food for me as it was not ordered. I turned to my son-in-law who made the reservations. He told her that he had mentioned Asian vegetarian for all in the family. She served some eggs but I don’t eat eggs even.

She came back again and told me that she had no food for me. I didn’t eat anything that night. This makes the journey and the trip disappointing. My daughter sensing this problem carried all provisions to make food in the hotels where we stayed.

While travelling to India or coming from India is not much of a problem.  They manage to serve a mixture of veg and non veg. Once this happened. I was very hungry and I was eagerly waiting for food to come. It was late and it was Air India Flight, a very huge one carrying almost 400 passengers. The food trolley arrived. I waited for my turn with great expectation.

She came closer to me when the trolley got empty. When she again came she told me that no Vegetarian food that was available. She brought only the salad looking like a bunch of leaves with purple pieces of ham. She thought it was some leaf stems.. She told me that was the only food available. This was very ungenerous I thought and cursed my fate. This makes travel very unpleasant.

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