So I’ve mentioned before how you find cows in the most unlikely of places in India.
Many are free range – and even those that are cared for are allowed to wander about during the day. Often snacking on delicious garbage and getting in the way of traffic.
All well and good, it’s part of the India experience after all.
Well I came out of my housing complex the other day, on a particularly warm afternoon and was slightly startled to find a whole herd had congregated directly outside the main gate next to a shady wall.
Generally I’ve got used to cows wandering about – it’s such a regular occurance, it’s no longer a suprise. But somehow seeing eight sleek and shiny cows chewing the cud next to a big road and an open drain about a minute from my house… well, it seemed noteworthy.
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yup, many a time I’ve been caught up in ‘cow jams’….a normality for me now…just don’t have one die on your property…it is seen as bad luck, and the last time I was there somebody told me that you would have to pay for the funeral..not the owner of the cow! Not sure if that is 100% correct, but hey, ‘shoo-ing’ a cow away would be your best bet!
Good lord, really? I had no idea.
In fact, I didn’t know cows had funerals… I feel a lot more research and a new blog post coming on. Thanks for the heads up. I’m off to practise my shooing technique.
No doubt what they leave behind is also part of the India experience? The legal term ‘grazing rights’ politely avoids reference to the inevitable product of the grazing process.
But…perhaps this is why the grass is always greener on the udder side…?
Groan….
But I will say this, the odd thing about cow dung fires, is that it’s actually quite a pleasant sweet smell from them. Not the smelly thing you’d imagine. And at least here you know someone will come and clear it up and ‘use’ it rather than just leave it to rot in fields.
Same with houses covered in a the mud form – it’s not what you expect at all. A few years back I did a yoga retreat in Goa where their yoga shala was covered in an eco glaze of cowdung slurry and I naturally assumed the worse. No-one wants to have their nose pressed to what I was imagining. But the odd thing is it smells of nothing and is actually slightly antiseptic and it keeps the creepy crawlies away.
Don’t ask me how or why – it just does.