They met for lunch at a modest restaurant in Trivandrum, polished floors, quiet clinking of cutlery, ceiling fans lazily slicing the tropical heat. A place where people came for dependable food and, perhaps unknowingly, to have their illusions dismantled.
Her last afternoon in India. By nightfall, she would be on a flight back to Singapore back to routine, back to roles, back to the dull predictability of internet groups and weekly grocery lists.
This trip had been her husband’s idea as much as hers. He had encouraged her to come, sensing that she needed the time. Since her father’s death, a quiet void had followed her everywhere, a hollow space she could not fill with work, family, or distraction.
Her guru, almost her father’s age, had stepped gently into that absence. Not replacing him, but somehow standing in the gap a steady figure she could lean toward when the ache threatened to swallow her. India was not a holiday, not really. It was a way of breathing again. A way of remembering that loss was not only an ending but also a passage into something new.
She had been staying at a small hotel not far from the restaurant and guru's place, its faded walls carrying the perfume of sandalwood and mosquito coil. For a week she had moved like a pilgrim without a temple walking, watching, gathering fragments of a land that both dazzled and unsettled her.
Alone this time, her husband unable to come, she had filled the hours not with shopping bags but with footsteps. She went to temples whose gopurams rose like painted mountains, every surface crowded with gods. As she stood beneath them, her mind slipped back to another temple far from here a small oil palm temple in Johor Bahru.
She remembered sitting quietly as a craftsman worked on the pillars, slowly coaxing guardians from stone fragments. Piece by piece he pressed each fragment into place, his eyes narrowing in precise concentration. She had watched not only the movement of his hands but the intensity of his gaze, and she wondered what images filled his mind.
From which inner landscape did these guardians emerge? She wanted to dive in, to swim inside his imagination, to see the figures as he saw them before they took form on stone. The memory clung to her in Trivandrum, as though the massive gopurams and the small village temple were connected by an invisible thread. Creation, whether on a towering gate or a single pillar, was still an act of human vision and persistence.
Gods may have crowded the surfaces, but it was human hands that shaped them, human eyes that envisioned them. Always alone, always the outsider, yet never lonely she carried these impressions like offerings gathered along her path. Her guru had not been with her on these wanderings. He had given her space, as though solitude itself was part of the teaching.
Only today, on her last afternoon, had he called and asked her to join him for lunch. He arrived in a worn tutu rickshaw, stepping down with the same quiet dignity he carried into every room. No entourage, no ceremony.
Just him.
Two of them, at a simple table.
One meal.
One last lesson.
The waiter brought a menu scribbled in two languages. Without hesitation, her guru ordered beef.
She froze.
Beef?
Her mind stuttered. Hindus don’t eat beef. Everyone knew that. It was carved into the cultural code, unspoken but absolute. And yet here he was, breaking the “rule” with the ease of asking for a glass of water.
When the dish came, he ate slowly, unhurriedly. No rebellion. No performance.
Just food on a plate, morsels between fingers, the rhythm of chewing. Then he pushed the plate toward her. She took it without hesitation.
Beef was not foreign to her. She ate it sometimes, especially when out with friends or when her husband was not around. Her favourite was beef lungs fried with chillies: chewy, fiery, addictive. She would even sneak them home, eating in secret when he was away.
Still, she never quite understood the rule against beef. Once she asked her husband, and he had explained patiently: “In ancient times, the cow was sacred because of its contribution to agriculture, to ploughing the land, to giving milk. That’s why it was not eaten.”
She had listened, then shrugged. “But we don’t plough land. We live in the city. We don’t farm. We only drink milk. So why keep the rule?
What use is this reverence to us now?”
To her it made no sense. The prohibition felt like a story carried forward long after its meaning had expired. Yet she still found herself obeying its shadow, hiding her indulgences in quiet corners, unable to bring it to the table in the open.
That was the difference. For her guru it was just food. For her it was still a secret.
And in that ordinariness, her brain sparked, fizzed, short-circuited. Years of wiring Hindus don’t eat beef, Muslims don’t eat pork jolted, misfired, collapsed into silence.
That night she thought of pork. Ah!, pork.
Even after she had move away Islam, the word alone stiffened her throat. Pork lived inside her like a ghost-rule, a phantom prohibition that clung to flesh and memory. She could eat mock ribs, soy cutlets painted pink, yet still knew she was playing a game with herself. Pretending. Half-breaking. Half-obeying. And there was more.
She remembered her outings with her Chinese friends noisy dinners, crowded tables, plates passed around without question. She would smile and tell them: “Order anything, pork or no pork, it’s okay with me. Just don’t tell me.” And they never did.
So she ate, and swallowed, and was fine. As long as she didn’t know, she could eat. But the moment she knew, the muscles in her throat tightened, her body recoiled. Knowledge itself turned food into taboo.
She realised then: she had been cheating her mind. Outsourcing responsibility. Pretending ignorance could protect her. Now there was no more hiding. No one else to order for her. No excuses.
“To break it, I must face it,” she thought. “Not secretly. Not in rebellion. But like him openly. Without drama. Without the theatre of sin or salvation.”
At ex-Muslim gatherings, pork and alcohol were always at the centre, flaunted like trophies of freedom. Plates of bacon, clinking glasses of whisky. A ritual of reversal. But she can never make herself eat those plates of bacon during the gatherings.
But she saw it now: they were still bound.
He hadn’t eaten beef to prove a point. He had eaten it because it was simply food. That was the difference. Not defiance. Not fear. Just choice.
That night, in the quiet of her hotel room, she placed a small plate before her. On it lay a portion of grilled pork, its edges charred, the fat still glistening, and beside it, a small glass of red wine poured from the bottle she had bought earlier. Side by side, the two taboos glowed in the lamplight food and drink, the twin ghosts of her past.
She sat cross-legged on the floor. No one to watch, no one to perform for. Just her, the meat, the wine, the silence. She touched the pork first, felt the oil against her skin, the nervous tremor in her hand.
She whispered: “This is flesh. This is matter. No name. No sin. No god inside this.”
She tore off a piece and chewed. The smoky flavour hit first, followed by the salt and richness of fat heavier than chicken, softer than beef. Familiar, though she had never eaten it knowingly.
Tonight the difference was knowledge. This time she knew exactly what it was. And that made all the difference. The phantom voice in her head screamed for a moment, then went quiet. Only the hum of the ceiling fan and the incense smoke remained.
She exhaled slowly, reached for the glass. The wine caught the light, deep and red, as though it carried the memory of blood, of ritual. She raised it to her lips and drank. The burn was gentle, then warm, then gone.
No thunder.
No punishment.
No divine hand pulling her back.
Just food and drink, dissolving into the body, becoming part of her.
For a long moment she sat in stillness, palms pressed together, not in prayer but in gratitude. The conditioning was not erased in one night but something had shifted. She smiled faintly.
“Not rebellion. Not fear. Just choice.”
Before leaving for the airport, she asked the driver to wait as she leave her bag in the car while she carried herself up the familiar steps of her guru’s house. He was sitting in the living room, reading, and when he saw her, he did not stand.
He remained seated, as though he already knew why she had come. She bent down and touched both his feet, seeking his blessings for her journey home.
Then, in a quiet whisper, she told him what she had done. His eyes lifted from the page, and his face softened with a pleased, quiet knowing.
“You’ve done well,” he said simply. “I am pleased. Now you can go back to your family in peace.
You have my blessings.” She bowed once more.
Outside, the driver started the car. The journey home had already begun. She no longer needed to prove anything at all.
