Celebrating food? Think again

While a child dies of starvation in Thar, Karachiites did not look good celebrating food in Karachi Eat 2015 Festival


Natasha Raheel January 29, 2015

Hello empathy, did we leave you or did you leave us? The space in our minds vacated by you has been filled with thoughts about food.

Food is very important; its purpose is to energise us and, if you can enjoy the experience while attaining the required amount of nutrition to survive, it’s all good. However, if as a society, you consider food to be an entertainment, you should know that there is something very wrong with you. Food is not to be celebrated but to be grateful for.

The hype across Karachi last week was for Karachi Eat 2015 Festival. The casual conversations changed into who went to the festival, and if you failed to go, you must be missing out on a lot of ‘fun’. Social media was filled with people showing off what they ate at the festival. What struck me the hardest was food being reduced to ‘fun’ and business. We, as a society, and especially as Karachiites, looked ugly celebrating food like this. The death toll in Thar was 47 till three days ago, all of them children. They tasted death because they did not have enough food to live. Women actually die during labour because of malnutrition.

Food, a simple necessity, a rare one in some parts, being abused and people accepting it knowing that at least one child dies just 728 kilometres away in Thar because he or she could not get any. Karachiites, thus, did not look good celebrating food. As someone with a conscience, it seemed unacceptable to me to go out and actually pay for such food and take pleasure in it, just to be part of something just because it was happening in the city.

It would have been nice though, to read even a sentence, where the Karachi Eat organisers for example could have mentioned that some portion of the proceeds would be dedicated to the people in Thar. I’m not saying we need to die with the dead or suffer because someone else is suffering, but the least we can do is acknowledge the fact that we can help, and we need to respect or at least be considerate. The least we can do is have a conscience and know what suits us as a society and what comes across as ignorance and unnecessary. I can only suggest that if this festival was such a hit, maybe another one like this should be organised soon, and the proceeds from it can go to Thar. This might leave us a little less ignorant and a little more human.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 29th, 2015.

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