I recently happened to stop by a friend of mine. I was not knowledgeable of what family he had or not-had. As I met him at the door of his house, he indicated that it was time to lunch and we should go out somewhere nice. I concurred [yeah, the same way DiCaprio does in catch-me-if-you-can].
He turned around and said.. Jimmy come on.. lets go for lunch.
Well, I half expected to see a teen, given my friend's age, coming out. By I was kindlessly greeted by a black blood-hound sniffing it's way at my most precious parts as I solemnly prayed.
If a survey is done surely we would find more per capita cats-dogs in US households than the number of children. Curious we Indians never share that kind of spirit for animals.. I would not be exaggerating if I were to blame the bovine cause.
So important are they in the part of Indian ecosystem and socio-religious system that we cannot for a minute imagine being without the "holy-cow".
Here in the parks we have strict rules about people picking up after their jimmy's or wookie's poops. Wouldn't it be a little nice to see people foraying behind the holy bovines with a fry pan?
They are not merely animals for us. They are part of the ecosystem. Think about all the garbage newspaper, vegetable market remains and other obnoxious materials that they ingest, partly digest, ruminate, fully digest and then excrete - only to be used to layer the floors of some houses and use in "havans" [gau-mootra].
The bovine problems have been severly compounded by our apathy and our attitudes - I will explain both.
Is there anybody who has thought about something like parking-lots for cows. Wouldn't that be a nice idea if the cows get up in the morning.. go to the lots.. do their ingestion-excretion and go back to thier places to sleep? They can probably sleep there and live there if they do not have home.
All the lesser Morarji-Desai types need not go around looking for a bovine creature. Just hop into one of these lots and you will get a packed liquid or solid whatever you want [for a price of course]. So this talks about employment avenues [I should be a finance minister.. sigh!] in procuring [all the waste], cleaning, packaging, marketing [surely there will be competing lots], administrating areas. Do I see any B-school people nodding their heads?
Agreed that these lots will not be a nice place to work at, but surely it would be better than to have slimy scoops of poops on the road or unemployed youth indulging in criminal activities.
No longer will the truck/bus drivers need to be stressed out thinking how to manuevre around the meditating cow on the road [don't ever try running over it!].
So having succeeded in keeping our ecosystem intact lets move on to the sociological ramifications and issues.
The slimy poops everywhere are our creation. We see lots of places marked "Men" "women" or "His" "Her" but have we seen anything marked "Cows" [I do not know if we need "bulls" and "cows" different]. Now you see from my point of view.. they had no where else to scoop out.
After complex analysis by psychologists or using the prevailing common sense among general people we can conclude one thing - anything the cows do or have reflect our own attitudes and habits. Lets see the common traits:
Cows are lazy and dirty....
All they do is eat.... [I am again feeling hungry.]
They do not respect traffic signals, the zebra crossings even less.
They see people relieving themselves anywhere and everywhere...
[Some people have an itch in their groin as soon as they see a wall].
Cows might think "what the heck?" and raise their tails.
So what we need to do is set an example for the cows. Stop succumbing to that itch. Build cow-lots and train the cows as we train our kids.
adieu