Once, a neighbour asked me, "Sahida Ji, do you read Namaz daily?" I knew the reason behind it. Being a Muslim, since I was handling dogs the whole day, they must have felt wrong and asked me such a question. I said, "Yes I do read."
They asked, "Oh do you read five times a day?"
“No, I read only 3 times a day.”
“But there's no such Namaz in Islam.”
“My first Namaz is when I feed my street angels in the morning, the second Namaz is in the afternoon when I give them lunch and the third one is in the night when I feed them with dinner. All my ibadat, prayers are this.”
Taking care and feeding my angels is my worship, my namaz. By birth, I am Muslim but I follow humanity as my religion.
I am Sahida, maa of about 100 street angels and 1 biological son.
At the early age of 7, I’d lost my dad. He was 46, a cancer patient. After that, when I was in class 12, I was married quite early because my ma thought I was ugly looking and no one would marry me later. However, due to various reasons, the marriage didn’t last long. I have been a single parent since 1998. I brought up my biological son Shion alone.
From my childhood, I have always been around animals. At my home, I always had cats. At present, I have 3 cat sons with me.
In my first year of college, I started earning by giving tuitions. During my college days, I used to feed biscuits to a few street dogs while going to and coming back from college. Then I realised that it is not sufficient. I started cooking at home and then started feeding them.
It has been around 32 years that I have been feeding them. I wake up at 4 am to make food packets for my street babies. I cook food for all of them. I earn so that I can feed my babies. My lifestyle is like this. I rarely purchase anything for myself. All my basic requirements are fulfilled through gifts.
One message I wanted to give is please don't waste food at any cost. Think twice before throwing it off. If there's any leftover food after a party or any event, feed it to animals or people in need. What is left over for us, can be a lifesaver for someone. Everyone feels hungry, it's just that some of us can speak while others can't.
Being a bong, I used to love eating fish. Apart from fish, I rarely used to eat other meat like chicken.
Back in 2000, one day, suddenly while frying fish, I saw his/her eyes. It felt like that fish was staring at me and asking me questions that mom, how are you eating me? I turned off the stove that time itself and left. I don't know what/why it happened...I cried a lot that day. I stopped eating fish from that time.
Slowly, I left non-vegetarian food completely. However, I used to consume milk at that time. Then one day I thought why not quit all kinds of animal products. Then, I wasn't aware of the term vegan. On my birthday, 26th January 2000, I quit all kinds of animal products in my diet.
From my childhood, I used to love animals and being around them. There were 28 cats, 1 Alsatian, and 2 rabbits at my home during childhood. However, no one thought that I'll go that far for animals. I consider this as my duty towards animals. I consider myself as a mother and a mother can do anything for their kids.
I'd a huge stock of silk sarees too. When I got to know how many cocoons need to die for silk, I stopped buying silk too.
It has been more than 20 years of being vegan but there have been no health issues related to diet. I have a normal Indian diet...pulses, sattu, dal-rice, puffed rice, fruits, vegetables, roti sabzi. Occasionally, I eat tofu and all.
I've hypothyroid and some spinal issues. However, all these are hormonal issues and nothing related to my diet, with no deficiency of protein. Diabetes is due to abnormal stress I have.
My son is also an animal lover. He doesn't eat meat at all but isn't vegan yet. I don't want to force him because until and unless it comes from the heart it won't be effective. I know slowly he'll be vegan.
Being a single parent, at home, there's no issue because my son never opposed it. Sometimes it used to be an issue during family functions at my mom's place. I used to eat only salad at times. My mom used to say why aren't you eating when I've cooked so many items for you. However, after so many years they've understood that I won't change.