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INTERACTIVE DISCUSSION:
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WHERE: Art Lounge - Sunaparanta, Near Lar de Estudantes, Altinho, Panaji
WHEN: September 30, 2009 - 5:30pm
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COWS IN MY VILLAGE
By: Bennet Paes, Assolna
e-mail: [email protected]
In Goa, and perhaps in the rest of India as well, the cow is deemed
untouchable, but not for the same reason, nor in the same sense as the
proverbial ‘untouchables’ of India are.
It roams the streets of my village at will. Not just alone. It has many of its
ilk for company – young, old, males or females. They all come out of nowhere,
and so we wonder. They jostle for a blade of grass in summer months, and gobble
up the greenery that sprouts during the rest of the year. They seem to be a
happy lot, and lucky too, because no one, not even a crafty butcher dares to
put them under his knife.
Obviously they must be producing one of the richest sources of nutritional
value - milk . But we don’t know who reaps that harvest, scanty though it may
be. They also deliver the second best thing they are famous for – the dung. But
sadly enough all deliveries take place on our village roads, on our
side-walks, in the market square, the church square, where our children play or
where our elders rest, and most irritatingly right in front of our garden
gates. It is the height of a pollution drive in our village.
The prize winning accomplishments of our MLA’s – the motorways, are so full of
the green matter that sometimes it becomes impossible to weave through and
prevent our tyres getting tarnished. And then you suddenly find a herd of them
blocking the entire width of the way. Our Panchas, the watchdogs of law and
‘disorder’, find nothing wrong with the meandering manners of these animals.
While on the roads, they claim the cows serve as intermittent barriers to the
speeding men on wheels, thus reducing traffic tragedies. While in the market
place, the Panchas think the cows contribute to the re-cycling of the village
garbage. Having made no provision by the government to dump the domestic waste,
our village folk ease it bang in the middle of the market square, and right at
the foot of the flag-hoisting pedestal erected in memory of a ‘freedom
fighter’, as if to say that his fight for freedom also included a right to
pollute.
So much for the civic sense of our generation. But some consolation comes in
the bargain. The cows gobble up the garbage, and amazingly the bazaar seems to
achieve a semblance of cleanliness. But alas, the spectacle does not last
long. Living up to the laws of nature, what goes in, comes out. And voila!
what looked like a clear surface only a while ago, gets artistically dotted
with little mounds of excrement, known to human beings as the veritable
cow-dung.
Let’s now travel to another polluted area of the village - the church square.
On Sundays the cows gather in large numbers on one side of the house of God. A
former pastor, when asked how he could accept such a display of animals amidst
church-going humans, answered in a broadly catholic spirit: “God created
animals too, so they too have the liberty to congregate at the place they
choose to worship”. But the holy priest’s explanation, though quite in sync
with a vast array of spiritualists in our country, leaves us puzzled as to how
a Goan cow distinguishes a church from a temple, or for that matter, if cows
come to church to worship or be worshipped. The answer to this has perhaps been
passed on to the former pastor’s successor. However, in order to assuage public
sentiment and with the collective wisdom of a church committee, a strange
contraption meant to ward off intruding cows has been installed. It is made up
of metal pipes laid down
at the entrance of church gates, with gaps wide enough to trap the heel of a
woman, rather than the hoof of a cow. Simplistic solutions do not deter
defying cows.
In olden times, a cow’s excrement used to be a substitute for what we now call
cemented tiles that adorn the floors of modern day houses. In the form of a
dried up ‘cake’, the dung also vied for a place in energy conservation - for
heating water and cooking our food. This practice may have faded away among
prospering societies, but is still prevalent in many parts of rural India,
including our ‘cow-ardly’ Goa.
In the final analysis, I have to say it is a matter of great shame for us to
see these cows graze and defecate on our village land, while their most
precious gift to mankind, the milk is being savoured by invisible herdsmen
elsewhere. More than this, it is disgusting to know that our government and a
bunch of cattle-class activists deem it passable for stray dogs and cows to
spread pollution and disease, in utter disregard to the voices of sanity that
beg us to stop this growing menace to mankind.
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