What to Eat?

For months now, Kashmir has been living with a silent fear. Now it’s not the fear of floods or landslides. It’s the fear sitting on our dining tables. The fear we bite into every day without knowing. The fear we feed our children, thinking it is nourishment.

Food. The simplest word. The deepest trust. And today, the most shaken faith. It started like a whisper. A video of a dead rat floating in the oil used for frying moujgoel. People laughed nervously. “These things happen,” some said. But something in the stomach twisted.

Then came the rotten meat stories. Meat treated with chemicals to hide the smell. The kind of meat that looks fresh but dies twice before reaching the kitchen. We told ourselves this must be rare. A one-off. But more stories surfaced. Too many for reassurance.

Then the dead chickens. Cleared as alive. Declared “fit for sale.” Chickens that should have been destroyed, instead entering the food chain like nothing happened. People stared at the headlines and shook their heads. Some stopped eating chicken altogether. Others continued because what else was there to do?

And then biscuits. Something as innocent as a biscuit. Something we put in the hands of children. Something we snack on with tea, thinking it is undamaging. Tests revealed banned substances. Preservatives not meant for human consumption. Suddenly even a biscuit felt unsafe. Top it with bottled water; the element that once sustained life, now sustains only one thing. That is the fear of what might be floating inside.

And today the eggs. Adulterated, tampered with, suspicious in colour and texture. Eggs—the universal symbol of pure protein. The most trusted of all foods. The food our grandmothers relied on to build strength in the weak. And now even that feels contaminated. What is happening to our food? What is happening to us?

We say we are a people of hospitality. A culture built on sharing meals, offering tea, breaking bread together. Yet here we are, scared of our own markets. Suspicious of our own plates. This fear is not abstract. It is not some urban anxiety. It is physical. It rests in the abdomen like a knot. It changes how you shop. How you cook. How you trust.

Mothers now sniff meat twice. Fathers peel eggs carefully. Children ask, “Is this safe?” When food becomes a question, society becomes unstable. Food fraud is not new. It exists everywhere. But something is different here. The frequency. The boldness. The creative cruelty. The absolute disregard for basic ethics. It is as if profit has become the only religion. As if human health is a disposable detail.

What changed in us that eating has become an act of courage? We used to worry about rising prices. Now we worry about poison. We used to discuss recipes. Now we discuss lab reports. We used to bless the hands that cooked. Now we fear the hands that sell.

The problem is deeper than contaminated food. It is contaminated conscience. Someone somewhere woke up in the morning, picked up a dead chicken, and said, “It will sell.” Someone poured oil over a rat, shrugged, and said, “Fry again.” Someone mixed a banned substance into biscuits and thought, “No one will know.” Someone polished rotten meat and believed, “It looks fresh enough.” Someone cracked an egg and ignored the wrong colour.

This is not a food crisis. This is a moral crisis. And like all moral crises, it grows only when some section of society partakes the profits. We need more than advisories. More than raids. More than headlines that last 24 hours. We need a cultural awakening about food reliability. A collective refusal to accept garbage as nourishment. A public insistence that what reaches our plates must respect the human body.

Food is not just energy. It carries remembrances, sentiment, personality. A mother feeding her child is not just offering calories. She is offering care. People sharing a meal are not just consuming nutrients. They are consuming trust. When that trust is fractured, something fragile breaks in people.

We must reclaim this space. We must demand standards. Demand accountability. Demand that food inspectors exist beyond file photos. Demand that violators face action. Demand that food safety becomes as sacred as healthcare.

Bottomline: Need to rethink and ask why we allow shortcuts to earn quick money? Why we normalise the idea that “chalta hai,” even when it comes to food? Food should not be a gamble. Eating should not feel risky. Nourishment should not become a threat. We need to restore worth to our kitchens. Purity to our plates. Genuineness to our markets. Because the day a society begins to fear its own food, it is not the stomach that starves. It is actually the soul.