Buyer, beware: Vegetarians only

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Veg or non-veg? In Bombay, it matters

 

By RAMOLA TALWAR BADAM, Associated Press Writer

Mon May 29, 1:11 PM ET

 

Never mind pets, smokers or loud music at 2 a.m. House

hunters in Bombay increasingly are being asked: " Do

you eat meat? " If yes, the deal is off.

 

As this city of 16 million becomes the cosmopolitan

main nerve of a booming Indian economy, real estate is

increasingly intersecting with cuisine. More

middle-class Indians are moving in, more of them are

vegetarian, and the law is on their side.

 

" Some people are very strict. They won't sell to a

nonvegetarian even if he offers a higher price than a

vegetarian, " said real estate broker Norbert Pinto.

 

Vegetarianism is a centuries-old custom among Hindus,

Jains and others in India. The government reckons

India has some 220 million vegetarians, more than

anywhere else in the world.

 

" Veg or non-veg? " is heard constantly in restaurants,

at dinner parties and on airlines. And the question

has long been an unwritten part of the interrogation

house hunters must submit to.

 

But it's becoming more open, and the effects more

noticeable, all the more so in Bombay, which attracts

immigrants from Gujarat and Rajasthan, strongly

vegetarian states, as well as followers of the Jain

religion.

 

In constitutionally secular India, there's no bar to

forming a housing society and making an apartment

block exclusively Catholic or Muslim, Hindu or

Zoroastrian.

 

Vegetarians say they too need segregation.

 

" I live in a cosmopolitan society, " said Jayantilal

Jain, trustee of a charity group. " But vegetarians

should be given the right to admit who they want. "

 

Rejected home-seekers have mounted a slew of court

challenges to the power of housing societies to

discriminate, but last year India's highest tribunal

ruled the practice legal.

 

" It's just not fair. It's a monopoly by vegetarians, "

said Kiran Talwar, 49, a prosthetics engineer who has

seen vegetarianism take over restaurants and groceries

all over his childhood neighborhood on posh Nepeansea

Road.

 

" If you step out to eat, there's nothing for miles

because everything around is veggie, " he said.

 

Suburban supermarkets have been known to dump their

non-veg foods overnight because of complaints from

shoppers.

 

" We cleared our shelves of tuna tins and frozen

chicken. We don't keep any nonvegetarian items now, "

said Neelam Ahuja, owner of the K-value supermarket.

" Many customers don't like non-veg, so we stopped

stocking it. "

 

K-value took the action even though it's in a heavily

Christian neighborhood, and Christians in India aren't

known to have particularly many vegetarians among

them.

 

While Indians are accustomed to housing societies

demarcated by religion, separation by diet has

meat-eaters worried. Bombay likes to think of itself

as a city wide open to the world, and some worry that

the vegetarian tide goes against that trend.

 

Vikramaditya Ugra, a young Bombay banker in search of

an apartment, said vegetarian colonies were fine in

neighboring Gujarat, a state dominated by vegetarians.

" That's in tune with local sensitivity, " he said.

 

" But to impose this restriction is not right in a

cosmopolitan city like Bombay. "

 

Ravi Bhandari, a 68-year-old retired businessman, said

he tried to lease his apartment to an Indian oil

company but the housing society bluntly nixed the

deal.

 

" They said the first tenant is vegetarian, but who

knows who will replace him? " said Bhandari, himself a

vegetarian who confesses that he had a soft spot for

chicken in his youth. " I respect their concerns so I

didn't lease my flat. "

 

2006 The Associated Press.