Critters in our Indian Lives

by Vani Viswanathan

[box] Have you ever thought about the connection between India and animals? Here’s some sort of an observation, comparison – call it whatever you want. The bottom line is all about what animals have meant to the Indian way of life. Vani Viswanathan writes. [/box]

What do you think of when you hear ‘India’? If you felt like being important, you’d have thought about economic growth, inequality, inflation. If you felt like sounding intelligent without having an opinion, you’d talk about corruption and the like. If you felt like drowning in self-praise, you’d talk about our rich culture, Bollywood, etc. If you felt angry, you’d talk about social inequality, women’s rights, etc. For the last seven years, conveniently sitting outside India, I used to talk at length about all of the above. But now that I’m back, I want to devote some space to things that barely catch our attention, but that knowingly or unknowingly, form a major part of our lives in India.

Our friends on the roads, in the skies.

Let me stop you right there if you think I’m going to rant about Haha-there-are-cows-on-the-road. Yes, there is a bit of that, but this is much more than that.

God decided dogs are man’s best friends, and nowhere has it been that sincerely practised as in India. We love them so much that we allow them to freely roam the roads, even at risk to our lives. No, really, I’m not being sarcastic here. All it would take is a van to come and cull these dogs, but we let them be; as much as we hate their howling at night, as much as we hate the fighting match they begin with our domesticated dogs, as much as we hate jumping in and out of their pools of poo in the road, life wouldn’t be the same without those golden brown or black mongrels weaving their way through our paths. Who would we lovingly leave some leftover rice and curd for? Incidentally, my friends in Singapore were surprised we feed our dogs curd rice – dogs are lactose intolerant, apparently – but I wonder what our vegetarian-family-owned dogs would have done – and they didn’t die, did they? I rest my case. We exemplify man’s friendship with dogs.

Moving on to other critters. Pigeons, for example. There used to be hordes of pigeons near my apartment block in Singapore. They outnumbered tourists in beautiful locales in Greece and Istanbul. But pigeons there were extremely well-behaved and toilet-trained. Nowhere would I see a whole patch of white bird excreta, and boy, not once did I face the unfortunate situation of a bird doing its business and receiving a bit of it. They were clean, organised – and you know, very un-bird-like. Contrast with Mumbai. Within a month of arriving here, I was ‘blessed’ by a bird that flew in to a sort of closed space I was sitting in, did its business and flew out. Now that’s what birds should be like – free to do what they want, behave like animals. And I love that they have this freedom in India.

Cows, how can I forget cows. We worship them. Some of us eat them. We are ridiculous to the extent of having laws that tell us not to kill them. We let them eat the posters off our wall and the tiny grass that sprout around the trees of our roads, and drink the milk they give once they’ve digested these things. We stop our cars to let them cross, and the older, more religious among us touch their tails as they pass, for that’s where Lakshmi, our goddess of wealth, resides. We paint their horns, tie bells, let them fight, let them kill us in those fights. Our cows look like they’ve seen life. A rough life. Not easy-peasy, like the fat cows in Switzerland or something, which only have to eat healthy green grass and give foamy healthy milk. Like the very essence of our country, our cows go through grave difficulties and (yes, admittedly, only some of them) survive to tell the tale.

I can go on and on. About how we pick up stray cats and dogs, feed them till they display their strayness and run away again. How we religiously lay a feast for crows during Pongal, full of coloured balls of rice. How we marry a donkey and a monkey (or a donkey and a human too, sometimes), to pray for general well-being, to get rain, etc. About how we draw kolam patterns with rice flour so ants can eat them (yes, we might draw lines with Lakshman Rekha to kill them inside the house – but who asked them to come inside now?) About how we stare with some morbid glee at the crow pecking on the dead rat’s brains. We in India have a weird relationship with our animals. We love them, and that’s why we torture them. We love them, and that’s why we worship them. We love them, and that’s why we let them be on the roads. This, to me, is quintessentially Indian. More than the growth, shining stories, inequality and everything. There are some things that pervade the Indian classes, go beyond money. Be it a Mercedes S-class or a Piaggio truck, we all stop for the cows.

Pics:

Singchan - http://www.flickr.com/photos/35832540@N03/
Swami Stream - http://www.flickr.com/photos/araswami/
Alaina B - http://www.flickr.com/photos/alaina/

Vani Viswanathan is often lost in her world of books and A R Rahman, churning out lines in her head or humming a song. Her world is one of frivolity, optimism, quietude and general chilled-ness, where there is always place for outbursts of laughter, bouts of silence, chocolate, ice cream and lots of books and endless iTunes playlists from all over the world. Vani was a Public Relations consultant in Singapore and decided enough is enough with the struggle to find veggie food everyday, and returned to India after seven long years away. Vani blogs at http://chennaigalwrites.blogspot.com

 

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