The Cow is Sacred – Full stop

Cow is sacred. If you are an ardent Hindu, you worship her; even use its picture as your political symbol. If you are an artist paint her, everyone shall clap for you hale you as a successful artist. This is how it is done in India.

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In the village, my father used to tell a story of two friends, a Goldsmith and a Trader. In this story these two men lived in villages about twenty or so miles apart. The way story went, Goldsmith often visited the Trader; one day Goldsmith invited the Trader for a return visit.

On Trader’s first visit, Goldsmith’s wife prepared a special meal and served it on a large shiny plate made of solid gold. The Trader enjoyed the meal but liked the plate even more. A fleeting thought went through his mind, if he could steal it. The Goldsmith saw the greed in his friend’s eyes, and understood his desire.

When Trader had retired to his room, the Goldsmith devised an ingenious way to protect his plate from his guest. He hung a basket over his bed from the ceiling, placed the golden plate in the basket and carefully filled it with water. He knew any one tried to take the plate would spell the water, which would surely wake him up, and he went to sleep.

The Trader waited until he was sure his host was asleep; he tiptoed into his bedroom, surveyed the clever device to protect the golden plate. After a little brainstorming, he found a wheat straw, carefully sipped all the water from the plate, while the host slept, then he removed the plate and packed it carefully into his personal bag and went to sleep.

Early morning, the Goldsmith woke up to find the basket over his bed empty; he immediately knew who could have taken the plate. Now it was his turn to tiptoe to his guest’s room, who was asleep like a log by now. He surveyed the changes; noticed Trader’s bag was more inflated than it came in. He carefully removed the plate, replaced it with a steal plate and secured the gold plate in his kitchen.

Next morning, Trader looked at his bag, felt happy at his achievement; and wanted to leave for home as soon as possible. The host checked the gold plate was still in the kitchen and wanted to teach his friend a lesson. Goldsmith insisted that his guest must stay for breakfast; the host’s wish prevailed. The host made sure that his wife served the breakfast in the same gold plate to the guest.

Trader was absolutely surprised and could not believe his eyes, asked his friend, how many gold plates he had in the house? The Goldsmith calmly replied, “my friend, I have only one gold plate in this house.” They both looked at the each other and smiled a knowing smile. The Goldsmith said to his guest, “my friend, we know each other well over a decade; let’s not play this game with each other”. Both agreed to travel the world and try their skills on others.

This was the start of a long story, during their journey many times they become rich and then again tried to cheat each other, as a result they loose everything. At the end of the story, the Trader asked again, how may gold plates his friend had at home. The answer was only ONE.
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THREE boys Gopal, Harjit and Gogi were studying in a village school; Gopal, only son of a priest had big dreams. He wanted to make a lot of money without knowing how and he did not care either. Harjit, a quiet one, son of a simple farmer also had dreams but kept them to himself. Gogi was the only son of poor widow, who worked hard helping a big landlord’s family; and she earned enough to raise her only son.

Gopal, grew up into a trouble maker, had to leave the village suddenly, when one day the police arrived to arrest him as he had tried to rape his neighbours’ daughter; and never heard again in the village for decades.

Harjit, also wanted to pursue his dreams and left village became a student of a portrait painter in the hills, and ended up going to an art school in Delhi. Harjit saw a stage was set for him to fulfill his dreams of becoming as artist.

He started to daydream how one day he would become an internationally known artist. But in his dream image he did not like his name Harjit, which reminded him of his village background, decided to change his name to ‘Gautam’, more suitable for an artist in the capital.

Poor Gogi had to stay in the village to help his mother. After several years working as a helper to a farmer, he managed to buy a cow. The cow happened to be of a good breed and daily gave him enough milk for his family consumption and to sell a part to earn enough money for simple living. His life was a smooth progression of getting married having children and buying couple of more cows.

Cows brought good luck to Gogi’s life, provided him and his family everything they needed for a simple life in the village.

Gopal, name means protector of cows, became a Trader. Gopal’s priest father who worshiped the cows chose this name for his son. Times changed so quickly that now his son exported cows to Bangladesh to be killed as long he made money.

Gopal, after he had made good money came to Delhi where set up a property company and made lots of money. His son who has joined him and set up a new Property Company. While son worked in Company’s Mumbai office, he met a film actress who played the role of goddesses in several Hindi movies and married her. Gopal took his son’s marriage to this demi-goddess as his personal success and made sure all her wishes were fulfilled including building a new mansion for her in Mumbai.

Harjit re-branded himself as Gautam had established as a successful painter in the capital. Cow was his choice subject in his paintings, those sold like hot cakes.

His full size painting of golden cow was sold for Rs.50 lacs (approx $100K), enough money to buy 200 best breed cows. But in this climate when only money counted, who wants to buy 200 living cows, it would need a lot of infrastructure to look after them and before one would see the money from their milk sales.

Delhi that had become part of the global market, Rs.50 lacs invested in one sculpture had the potential to doubling it in few years, without feeding the cow in this paiting.

Who would have bought such a painting in India, off course a spoiled actress from Mumbai?
The sale was celebrated in a five star hotel, Gautam met the young husband of the demi-goddess, who introduced Gautam to an opportunity for him to invest in his new Property Company.

People in the city’s art circles talk about the success of Gautam’s recent exhibition. An art critic had written how Gautam’s work had created awareness toward the plight of cows in the city. One review even mentioned Gautam was creating cow awareness as effective as dissected cow of Damian Hurst. But the stray cows on the streets of Delhi were still feeding on plastic bags. Who cares in this global city. Cows are sacred.

Last year came the global financial crisis, the property company in which Gautam has invested all his money collapsed; leaving scores of other investors in the cold as stray cows of the city.

Gogi was sitting in his courtyard, enjoying the afternoon cup of tea, thanking his cows, those provided him his livelihood without leaving the village. One day while he was thinking about his two other childhood friends, both his friends Harjit and Gopal arrived one after the other.

Both of them were looking at each other trying to recognize each other’s faces those were covered with layers of thick skin, a gift of city life.

Both had a look of someone when one who had lost the game of life. There was no need to say anything they both just laughed a hearty laugh.

Gogi was the only one knew how many brass plates he had in his house; other two had seen their gold plates disintegrate right in front of their eyes. My friends - cows are sacred and will remain sacred while noisy traffic of the city goes by them.

Avtarjeet Dhanjal