This is the most interesting reason.
Full details are at:-
http://www.satyamag.com/feb98/varanasi.html
Reproduced (with kind permission) for those who wish to read the core of it.
From Varnasi to Vegetarianism By Jason Freitag
I had been back from India for about a week. My parents had invited my partner and I for a summer evening dinner. Cedar Grove is a mid- to upper middle-class suburb of New York City, about 15 miles to the west. The lawns are well-manicured, there are two cars in every driveway, and life seems to be as it should--the prototypical image of the American suburb. We were on the deck in the backyard. The gas grill was fixed up, and my father was the grill master. He lifted the grill cover, and the very familiar smell of chicken cooking over a fire wafted across the deck. I've smelled this smell hundreds of times before. This time, however, it had more of a resonance--I'd smelled this somewhere else, or in some other context. I could not immediately place it. The conversation continued for a few moments--so-and-so is getting married, so-and-so is late in arriving. In a gentle wave of recognition, it came to me. The smell of the chicken on the grill in Cedar Grove was exactly the same as the smell of the funeral pyres on the Ganges at Varanasi. As I began to reflect, it became clear just how much sense this made. THEY WERE BOTH BURNING FLESH.
2006-11-12
08:24:30
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Vegetarian & Vegan