Vegetarian by choice

Twenty-four-year-old Nikhil Asrani recently bagged Peta’s Cutest Next Door Vegetarian Award. Currently working at an NGO in Chennai, he says he wasn’t born a vegetarian, but was inspired to become one.

“I was born into a Sindhi family and as you know, Sindhis love their meat. But I’ve been a vegetarian for the past three years and my mom has motivated me, as she’s been a vegetarian for over 40 years,” he shares.

How did he get selected for the award? “I had to fill up a few forms online about my views on vegetarianism. After three weeks, I was informed that I was one of the top 10 finalists. I was selected as the winner through an online voting procedure,” says Nikhil,who feels being a vegetarian is a win-win situation. “Not only are vegetarians healthy, each person who makes this choice also saves animals from spending their whole life confined to cramped and filthy spaces, being maimed, beaten and ultimately killed,” he adds.

“People often mix religion with being a non-vegetarian or vegetarian but I think that’s wrong. Vegetarianism is beyond religion; it’s a universal concept,” he says emphatically.

The mass communication graduate believes that the award has taken him one step further in his cause of propagating vegetarianism: “Personally, now that I have won the award, there will be no second thoughts about going back to eating meat. And since New Year is round the corner, I would tell people that turning vegetarian from 2014 is the best New Year resolution they can make.”