FISH

Arishka Jha

Before my family drove back from the tropical fish store near our house with two tiny koi fish, I didn’t think I’d be able to abandon eating meat entirely. When we left the aquarium, I kept the fish next to my seat in our car as they swam aggressively in circles around the small plastic bag they were placed in. The water sloshed as the car cruised over speed bumps and the open window blew air inside. 

One of the fish, Indigo, was black with silvery white streaks, and the other, Finny, a creamy white with tangerine spots and a black star between her eyes. They were beautiful but vulnerable in a way, as if one sudden movement of the car could severely injure them. When we got out of the car, putting them into the pond was a process, and we had to make sure that the fish were accustomed to the cold and plant-filled environment in our backyard. For a few weeks, they didn’t eat the food we fed them, instead preferring to sit at the murky bottom of the pond, hide underneath flame-colored leaves, and dissect flowers and pieces of algae that they would later fit into their small, circular mouths. A few months before that, I had the experience to truly understand that animals are not all innocent, but deserve the same chance at life that humans continually take advantage of.

* * *

At track practice one day, a few of us had a conversation about vegetarianism, and it seemed out of the blue, but really changed my mind. That day, it was cold outside and we ran around the maroon track, dodging swampy puddles and crushing acorns under our feet. We had started talking about what cuisines we liked to eat and then we later moved on to the various dietary preferences that we and people we knew had. 

“I’m pescatarian, but I really want to be vegan to help save animals. My parents would never let me, though,” said one of my teammates.

“Imagine being vegan,” someone else chimed in, “I could never. Meat is my absolute life. Besides, being vegetarian doesn’t help animals either, because they’ll be eaten anyways, and it just makes people kill plants.”

Another one of my teammates, who was vegetarian and clearly disappointed in some people’s misunderstanding of vegetarianism, said “If no one buys meat products, they’ll stop selling them at stores. And if they don’t sell them, farms will stop killing animals to make them. It’s not discriminating against plants or anything.” 

After a while of arbitrary conversation, we didn’t necessarily agree on anything, but it was the simple fact that the issues of animal cruelty were brought up after a while, and not in an overwhelming or obscenely graphic way, that made me seriously consider becoming vegetarian. 

* * *

Over winter break that year, my family went on a trip across Asia, where we travelled to Tokyo, Kyoto, and several cities in India. When we were in Tokyo, we stayed at a beautiful modern hotel filled with miniature waterfalls, bonsai trees, and plum blossoms. The walls were ebony and reflective, almost giving the illusion of infinite mirrors. At the 7-11 nearby, we purchased various snacks put in neon packages adorned front-and-center with pictures of enthusiastic actors.

Because where we stayed was a busy office area full of restaurants and malls, we could barely find fresh fruits and vegetables, and some of the only grocery stores there were streets away. On our second day there, we walked to the subway station closest to our hotel and boarded the train. I hung from the handholds fixed to the ceiling, the lemon-colored rubber and fabric chafing against my fingers. Through the window, navy blue posters depicting a small child, mouth open in fear, attempting to retrieve an umbrella from the train tracks, were affixed to emergency stop posts. The doors slid open, and I climbed up the steep column of stairs into the center of a bustling, brightly colored market. 

While we progressed through the market, the storefronts grew more and more disturbing, or maybe I just wasn’t used to the environment. To this day, I’m not sure exactly which it was. As the crimson sun clawed its way through the clouds, cat statues became stamps, paintings, headless bodies of salmon encased in icy plastic sarcophagi, and then papery-thin live crabs that fluttered and crawled around a tank, about to be abducted from their monotone, brain-in-a-vat existence and given to the allegedly superior species as a form of sustenance. 

* * *

This isn’t to say that watching the crabs swim around emptily made me decide to become vegetarian—after all, I was already aware of the inhumane treatment of animals throughout the world—but observing a place in which meat was so essential to society definitely contributed. After committing to being vegetarian a few months after that, I truly understood the struggle that comes with resisting temptation. In a world that values meat so much, it is nearly impossible to abandon it without stigma.

A few months after the trip, my mom drove me home from school on a Friday. We were all excited for a road trip that weekend, but I had come home to find that Finny, our koi fish, had been killed by a raccoon. We originally expected something like this to happen, but the fish had survived for more than a year, and by that time, all of our worries had faded. After that, Indigo barely came out to eat for a few weeks, and when she did, she no longer had the speed and confidence that she used to. She quickly moved on, though, and became even more excitable than she ever was. 

Witnessing the lives of Indigo and Finny made me think about what the lives of other animals must have been like before they were killed off for meat, and about how although keeping pets is perfectly humane, letting animals be treated like property is wrong. 

* * *

Even now, when I go to parties or restaurants with other people, conversations tend to go like this:

“Would you like to try a California roll from my plate?”

“No, I’m vegetarian, sorry,” I say, and although I used to kind of like them, California rolls or any other meat products no longer sound appealing to me. 

“Why? Is it because of anything?”

“Not really. I just am.”

“It’s okay. I know you still like meat, so don’t force yourself or anything,” they say. Or even worse, they tell me that I won’t succeed at sports or grow taller or even become smarter because I prefer not to consume pieces of animal flesh. People often treat being vegetarian like some kind of self-imposed restriction similar to a vow of silence, but that’s wrong. To me, being vegetarian is not a restriction, but is, in fact, liberating.