WITH WATER BUFFALO AND PIGS

The entertainment began in earnest at about 10am. Our first experience of what was to come was the screeching of pigs: strapped to long pieces of bamboo, the pigs were brought in, dumped on the ground and left to squeal at their fate. Seeing as the pigs were soon to end up as roast pork, the locals didn't exactly worry about how they treated the bacon: animal lovers would have been horrified, and that would mean death to me! And if the sound of squealing pigs was disturbing, the water buffalo took the spectacle from the unnerving to the downright shocking. I have absolutely no idea that it could be such an emotional experience for me, for as long as the "ceremony" went, I was weeping my eyes out at the cry of those animals, particularly the piggy.

The smell of death is distinctive: it permeates utterly. We took a seat right by the rectangular area where the killing was to take place, and as the slaughtering continued, I couldn't help thinking of Orwell's Nineteen-eighty-four: at the end the hero is a broken man, sitting in his local cafe every day, drinking nothing but clove-flavored gin, sweating clove-flavored sweat, crying clove-flavored tears... the smell of death, of blood and faeces and frightened animal, is similarly overpowering in its permeation.

The first water buffalo of the three we saw ritually murdered was the most intense sight: it's amazing how the human mind accepts the unacceptable after a while. I made my mind up to watch; I am a vegetarian and I have never had any inkling to become an animal killer. I have some morals when it comes to what I eat. I don't want to stick my head in the sand, I want to know what it takes to kill an animal, what's involved, and if I can live with that knowledge, I can continue to eat 'some' meat with a clear conscience. So I watched everything out of curiosity, but haunting. The buffalo is surprisingly calm as it is led into the arena: its keeper pulls it along by a rope attached to the ring in its nose, a method of control it has been obeying since it was born: why should today be any different? Even the dismembered pigs strewn across the center of the arena - killed elsewhere, as only buffalo are honored enough to be killed in front of everyone - don't worry the huge beast. It doesn't seem to notice, or care, as its front left foot is tied to a rock outcrop in the middle of the arena. After all, its owner is there, the person who has been working alongside it in the paddy fields for years.