What is it called? Chicken Biryani or Chicken meat Biryani? This dilemma continues for me. Let me explain with the help of a relatable example.
When do we stop calling a person as ‘man’? A male child is born. We begin to call him as ‘man’ from his 20th year. We say ‘He has grown in to a handsome man’. As the age progresses, we call him with various ‘Man’ names: Family man, Middle aged man, old man… so on. On the sick bed he is called as a ‘sick man’; When he dies, we call him ‘dead man’.
Usually the word ‘dead man’ is used to describe an unknown man who is found dead. If a known person’s body is found the we say “It is the dead body of Mr. XYZ”. With death the word MAN is replaced with BODY. Man means a person who is living. MAN becomes a ‘DEAD MAN’ in death.
Following the same logic, we will have to call the famed ‘Hyderabad Chicken Biryani’ or ‘Paradise Biryani’ as ‘Dead Chicken Biryani’. When alive, it is chicken. When dead we have no other option but to call it as a ‘dead chicken’. We cannot call a dead chicken as chicken in as much as we cannot call a dead man as a man! The words like pork, meat etc. indicate that the animal is dead. In case of chicken it is not the case. If you are talking of ‘Chicken Burger’ then it is imperative to call it as ‘Dead chicken Burger’ or ‘Chicken Meat Burger’. According to the dictionary meat is typically defined to mean either the flesh of an animal or bird as food. Therefore, chicken flesh falls in the definition of meat.
I wonder many a time if the human stomach became a burial place for the dead animals, for meat eating became a new eating obsession. I hail from Telangana state in India. Hyderabad is the capital of Telangana. You can also call this city as ‘Hyderabad Deccan’, to differentiate from Hyderabad of Pakistan. According to the statistics released by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), the consumption of meat in Telangana state is the highest in India. The average meat consumption per person per year in Telangana in 2021-22 is 21.17kg! On the other hand, the average meat consumption per person per year in all other states in 2021-22 is 4.5kg!
Here we are talking only of meat, and this excludes chicken meat. Hyderabad is a city that swears by Chicken Biryani or Chicken Meat Biryani. If we are to add chicken meat to the average meat consumption per person per year in Telangana, then I am sure the consumption per person per month will be 15kg! A live bird is called Chicken. When it is alive, it is chicken. When the chicken is dead and edible, it becomes ‘Chicken meat’. It is not out of place to say that the people of Telangana are generously offering free Grave Yards in their stomachs for any kind of meat!
Dr. K. Raja Gopal Reddy is a seasoned internationally qualified Insurance professional. What you are reading here, may not answer all the questions we have, but has the absolute power of asking unsettling questions which increase the interest in the strange world, and show the contradictory wonders lying just below the surface of the commonest things of life. Look at this disturbing but beautiful thought of Friedrich Nietzsche “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him”.
Dr. Reddy can be reached at: raja66gopal@gmail.com
