Holy Cow! It’s pure magic; we didn’t even know it

Holy cow! One must be more respectful to the cattle population now. And Shashi Tharoor, of the ‘cattle class’ fame, must know his animals better. Not many knew that lovable beast munching on discarded polythene bags besides grass and leaves was a treasure house of such brilliant qualities. That partly explains why the primary school teacher in the village routinely awarded two marks out of ten to run-of-the-mill essays on the humble cow. Of course, any essay with content like this – cow is a domestic animal. It has four four legs, two ears, one tail, two eyes. It gives us milk –- deserves to be treated with disdain and awarded two. When pestered on the low mark by worried parents, who most probably co-authored the essay, the teachers never bothered to reply. “Your kid is dumb,” they would convey using sweet and less offensive words. A bit of it applied to the parents too. The teachers behaved as keepers of the cow’s great secrets.[caption id=“attachment_177867” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Holy cow! Reuters”]  [/caption] But now we know. Thanks to the BJP and its mother organisation, the RSS, for enlightening us on the secrets of the cow. Not long ago, there were reports of a dream soft drink from the Sangh’s laboratory which would give cola and other soft drinks a tough time in the market. The basic ingredient of the drink would be cow urine. According to media sources, the Sangh’s Cow Protection department believed their product would rock the market. The intention here is not to run down the product—after all, who can stop an idea whose time has come—but imagine taking a bottle of soft drink to your lips knowing well that its cow urine! Hope they think of good advertising techniques to convince the potential drinkers. Cow urine is also believed to be helpful in treating painful eye condition, skin diseases, and knee and joint pain. The advocates of bovine urine claim that it could be used to treat TB and anti-biotic. It is also believed to be good as mosquito repellant and insecticide. No one, for a second, is denying the potential of cow urine. The ancient texts refer to its efficacy. If there are such claims, there must be good scientific proof to back them. But our teachers never bothered to open up on that. Neither have experts of any kind taken the pain to do so. Wonder why we still don’t have scientists on roadside billboards with a glass of cow urine in hand and demanding dil maange more. We are not done yet. If cow urine has such amazing properties, think of cow dung. It’s even better. It could save you from nuclear radiation and help women deliver babies without C-section. According to a report in The Indian Express, which presents in a nutshell the core ideas of the Madhya Pradesh government’s Cow Protection and Conservation Board, there’s more to the cow than just milk, urine and dung. Touching a cow helps stabilise blood pressure. People who drink milk of desi cows are less criminally inclined than people who drink milk of jersey cows and buffaloes. If at all this is true then the cow definitely deserves mush more respect than what it does now. We know this is one of the pet obsessions of the RSS. The BJP, which is at loss of ideas at this point and finding it difficult to connect to the masses, must take up this issue with all seriousness. It should start with building shelters for cattle abandoned by their ungrateful owners and taking them off the roads of the country. We are proud of our cows but we certainly don’t want them blocking traffic and running around streets as if they own all the roads. Now those still suspicious of the great Indian cow must go back to writing a school essay. If they stop starting at embarrassing stuff like ‘cow has four legs’ they will do much better. They could pester the teachers to let out some more on the secrets of the cow too.