The Vegetarian: Finding an Answer

Coincidence. That’s what I recall. Reading God of Small things in 2007, a decade after it made its first publication. And today(2nd July,2017), just completed reading Han Kang’s ‘The Vegetarian’, almost a decade after it was published. Not so proudly, I state that these two books are the only ones of my reading from the Booker Prize list. No gender bias, but both the authors turned out to be women.

These funny incidences apart, The Vegetarian won the Man Booker Prize in 2016 although it was published in 2007. Not only the title, but also a brief introduction of the book arrested my attention back then, naturally due to my abrupt abstention from non vegetarian food and growing fondness for nature. The reasons for my apparent change, unconscious or subconscious were not unambiguous and thus, could not be clearly related. May be some sort of an existential crisis, one philosopher friend of mine suggested or a resurgence of the eco feminist life style that I had fantasised once.

 I had always justified and opposed violence with the same vigour, at times clearly not knowing where to draw the line. To justify non violence in ‘totality’ is as absurd as hypocrisy. Hence, certain amount of violence is necessary to justify our living. If I put it this way, can anyone deny that instances of violence, whether small or big, bound together makes our daily existence possible? But, violence in extreme would not make life possible on this earth. So, where to draw the line?

I hoped to find a answer from Han Kang. After greedily reading the copy, the book has left me wanting. May be that’s the beauty of it- expecting your audience to be as imaginative! To be born as a tree,  I contemplated once, is the most selfless way of living. Trees are always giving and not expecting anything in return. Biologically speaking,  to brand a tree as vegetarian would be factually incorrect. Who feeds on the nutrients of the buried animal matter with their brawny sprouted hands underneath? Not the rogue hyenas, not the violent tiger nor the unpredictable omnivorous human, but the naive, innocent Tree. Han’s idea is good but sketchy.

Heading towards Kafka’s Metamorphosis. I hope it would give a hint...:)