Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Cannibalism

Lately I have been watching a lot of the forensic show 'Bones'.One of the highlights of season 3 was the case of a cannibalistic serial killer. It got me interested in the concept of cannibalism, the art of a human eating another human.
Given the many instances of cannibalism, it would be too presumptuous to call it a murder or a crime. In many cases, survivors of an accident or people in a famine, consume others to survive.That is the basic Darwinian concept of adaptation. And then there are others who eat their own body parts to survive, auto-cannibalism,No crime.
Closer home, we have the Aghori tribes, infamous for eating dead bodies from the cemetery. One of the reasons I have observed relatives of the deceased keeping a vigil on the dead body till it is completely burnt. Sound horrific, but these tribes still exist.
My wanderings through the Internet took me to a page based on the Aghori tribe.According to the author of the page, the members of this secret sect typically stay in the tribe for twelve years before returning to their families.
A typical cannibalistic ritual constitutes the tribe members gathering around a dead body and offering the first bite to their goddess of cannibalism, whosoever it is. They them move on to cook the human flesh and then eat it with alcohol.
Aghoris claim to be followers of Lord shiva and have been looked down upon because of there cannibalism. The ritual eating of human flesh has now been exploited as many disappearances in the country have been linked to these cannibals.
To add credence to this fact, an American cannibal, who had been previously institutionalised by the FBI is now roaming free in India, eating tourists as he moves around.http://www.sepiamutiny.com/sepia/archives/002767.html
According to one cannibal, "The human meat does not taste like chicken or pork, it is more like beef.And the flesh of a baby is like fish."
Makes me lose my appetite for meat.

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