THE RED BETWEEN THE LINES OF ILLEGAL AND LEGAL
This photographic essay was developed, realized and compiled by Franziska Lichtenberg and Parvathy CB.
The essay was created as part of the course Food and the City
under the guidance of Mansi Shah in the
summer semester 2023 at CEPT University in Ahmedabad.
Are we two radical consumers? The German, growing up with heavy beef dishes cooked in the dark winter nights of an East German home? The Malayali, day-to-day served with red meat and lobsters for every meal near the back waters of Arabian sea? When home, we are more than ordinary. What are we in Gujarat, in Ahmedabad? What are we and our Muslim friends, our formerly believing Hindu friends, our nonvegetarian friends? We live in those certain areas of the city, where you sometimes have to hide if you are one of those. Sometimes you have to pay a high price to live alongside the pure members of society. We live in a city in which the „impurity“ of the meat eater is not only about the meat, it is about their religion and their traditions. The consumption of certain food is one part of those traditions. The disgust and intolerance are the parameters that draw the lines between the veg and the non-veg.
Following the path of the buffalo means following a path along those lines. Those lines are loaded with memories of uprisings, riots, and brutality and hide a political state of segregation and domination. The meat far and close enough to the cow’s is highly regulated and still records a rising demand. We were able to trace the buffalo’s way through the old city of Ahmedabad. Our observation point is the relationship of the animal, the humans working with it and the places in which the animal becomes a consumer’s good.
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Phase I
Behrampura buffalo farm
Finding Behrampura farm. Burning heat, barking dogs. Finding a way through the garage commercial district. People are observing us, the white and the south Indian woman, walking, asking for the Buffalo farm. Farmers from around the city come here to get their Buffalos sold to the farm, one of the animal’s first encounters with the city. Surprisingly, we find the blue gate. We expected to hear the animals or smell them. We are allowed inside. Sunny, hot emptiness enclosed by concrete barracks. Grown-up buffalos are resting in the shade of those barracks. Some calves drink their mother’s milk. A few of them are brave enough to walk through the direct sunlight of the courtyard. All the others stand still. They lie underneath the roof structures in relaxed poses. Some look into the distance while standing, tied up with rope.
Their appearance feels familiar. They don’t seem to behave any other way than their cow counterparts, resting on the many streets of Ahmedabad. Still, they are facing a different destiny. Buffalos and men are stepping toward us. We are unusual guests. Everyone is tired from the noon heat. On weekends, new Buffalos arrive, and in the mornings, others leave. Some grow up here. We gain trust. The inhabitants, temporary and permanent, start to pose for the camera. Addresses of the slaughterhouse and meat markets and stories of difficulties with the police are being exchanged.
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Phase II
Jamalpur municipal slaughterhouse
In the night, pitch dark, the first time this day to feel comfortable outside, a coldish wind surrounds us. Two o’clock am. A half-slaughterhouse next to the main road. The other half was lost after the road was broadened. Slaughter-men sleep in their workplace. Half of the slaughterhouse sleeps, the other half is awake. The municipality allows only around thirty buffalos to be slaughtered each night in Ahmedabad‘s only officially approved slaughterhouse. An uncertain fraction of the 6 Million Ahmedavadis consume the meat of around one hundred buffalos each day. The source of the seventy remaining animal’s meat stays in disguise to us. We are invited to join the barefoot and shirtless men in the slaughterhouse. Buffalos are queuing on the right side of the long hall. They are silently standing, not moving. Most of them look away and don’t observe the process their fellows are going through. They arrived the previous day and encountered a doctor who came in the evening to check their health. Now, they are approved for slaughter. One man tights one Buffalo to the wall and holds it. Another takes one of his two small, sharp-edge knives and slits the animal‘s throat. Blood splatters on the wall. The buffalo falls, gets up on its legs, and falls again. It throws its head back. We hear the dull sound of the big animal falling, no screams, no sounds of suffering.
We are in disbelief at how quiet the process is taking place. The two men come to wash away the blood. Few words are being exchanged. While this animal took its last steps, the first big shoulder, rip, and leg chunks hang on hooks further left in the hall. Five men are working with a routined precision to dismantle those pieces of buffalo. A linear production chain opens up from the right to the left of the hall. From the living animal to the place of slaughter, followed by places for the dismantling of the body. The animal is dragged slightly further to the left side of the hall after every step. First, the body gets skinned, then its belly is cut open, the organs are removed, and finally, the pieces of meat are cut out and hung on the hooks, which are fixed along the walls. The person in charge turns to us. He points at a skinned corpse, „See, it pulsates. The Buffalo wants to tell us something“. In just three hours, from 2 am to 5 am, everything has to be dismantled and cleaned up. The fresh meat leaves at sunrise for the next journey to the market. Tight time schedules, no slaughter on Hindu and Jain holidays, a secret hidden in the morning hours.
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Phase III
Mirzapur meat market
As we enter the rondel-like halls of the municipal meat market in Mirzapur, it becomes hard to believe that this is a governmental meat distribution point. The cracked concrete floor opens up patches for water and blood to form little ponds. In niches, butchers work on different cuts of meat. Some are responsible for the finer cuts. Others care for heads and feet. We are once again the only women in this space. Dogs, rats, and crows accompany us to feed themselves on the leftovers, which are being thrown on the floor. The workers of the municipal market prepare the meat to be distributed in open-air meat markets all around the old city. One of them is right in front of the premises.
Hooks full of meat and large plates full of buffalo are sending out a fresh smell. Men are working with big knives. The outside market is inhabited by eagles circling the air above and housewives and children on the ground. Salesmen are hiding behind the cloth hanging halfway down from the roofs of the small stalls. Rumours of aggressive vegetarians, who are threatening the meat sellers, are filling the air between the eagles and the housewives.
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Franziska Lichtenberg Parvathy CB Summer Semester 2023