In 2001, while making my film Unlimited Girls, this newspaper did a cover story about a man who wanted the Chowpatty Dominoes to be “pure veg”. Then, it seemed a laughable oddity and I featured the clip in my film. But the issue grew. In 2004, it led me to make a short film—Cosmopolis: Two Tales of a City—about the growing phenomenon of buildings in the same (affluent, majorly Gujarati) neighbourhood that forbade non-vegetarian resident. One building’s residents even threw garbage as patrons entered a non-vegetarian restaurant in one of its shop fronts. “No one asked us to leave but they made it such an ordeal to do business that we eventually left.” the owner told me. Biases are imposed through an inimical atmosphere.

I obviously opposed this. A part of me wondered though about revulsion, because I have this weird revulsion for tea—my mother says it’s because she had a pregnancy-aversion to tea when she was expecting me. I’ve learned to work around it obviously—tea is ubiquitous in India. We co-exist by overcoming ourselves—the smell of tea, the smell of food, the taste of friendship, our political and moral tendencies.