04 March, 2011

Holy Cow!


Written a long long time ago.


          I must admit, it’s been a while since I last wrote to someone. Two years? Four years? I can’t recollect. But this time, I’m not going to write to you, I’m going to write about you.

        In this land, they call you a ‘Goddess’, a ‘Mother’, but Holy Cow! You look so under-nourished! This is the first time someone may be talking about an under-fed goddess. Out there in the villages, you are expected to carry the world’s burden on your skinny shoulders! But you don’t seem to complain about how much they whip you to get their work done. Even though you are an under-fed goddess, I have to admit, you’re doing an exceptional job of providing nutritious meals not only to them, but packed and sealed to us as well.

  I have to put forth a point though: A Goddess so skinny and under-fed is worshipped while your well fed and healthy sister is taken to the slaughter house? What a pity! Although, a meal made of your sister is too tempting to resist. And the best part about her is, she comes cheap! You know, in the far west, the foreigners first feast with you and later feast on you. Thank God! (Or thank you since you’re a Goddess yourself) we have some level of respect as compared to those in the west.

       As for what you’ve got to offer, I thank you for every little drop of calcium that you provide us with and the meat that you provide them with. But before I forget, you’re a ‘Goddess’. So even your waste matter has been made the best use of! Your Poo-poo can make do-do a lot of good uses in the interiors of this land. Walls for their houses, gas for their cooking, Goddess, you truly are the most useful and the most soft spoken goddess I might have ever come across!

As you stand in a corner, tied to a pole and busy chewing your cud, I am amazed that you can sustain yourself by chewing that grass you’ve consumed for nearly eight hours! We humans who smoke it on the other hand, can’t sustain ourselves for 8 minutes!

Another reason why you’re a true goddess is that you’ve provided us with the best of food. Even more, from the fields you’ve worked in. But we humans won’t spare a goddess as well. First they pray to you while the others prey on you. And that’s why we take everything that you could possibly give us. Even if it is your sh**, we’ll make the most of it.

You must be wondering, who am I to write about you? Well, I’m just an ordinary guy trying to make sense of what you mean to a person in his daily life. (funny that guy in the first language of this land is you and not me. But since I’m speaking in the second language, I can claim this one!) For a cow-herd, you would mean the world to him. He would take good care of you, make the most out of you so that he and his family could lead a good life. For a coward, you would mean heaven to him. He would sacrifice you for his sins so that he and his family could lead a good afterlife. Ironic, isn’t it? Two sides of the same coin. You remind me of another god who would do good and yet die for the sinners.

But let me not get into that, as I believe that every God is equal. But you’re a living example of it. And on behalf of your millions of ‘believers and non-believers’, I place this letter at your feet, sincerely thanking you for everything you have given us in this world.