holy cow!!

I am sure many of us, have experienced the last year nothing short of being a nightmare. Many of us lost their jobs and face an uncertain future. The travel trade got hit the worst and being in nature a highly specialised and an individual business, it lacked the needed lobbyism to make themselves heard. In most countries, Government support was sluggish or like in my case not forthcoming at all.

Thats when I thought of the plight of the holy cows in India. Indian travellers encounter them in the narrow lanes of the holy city Varanasi and other cities. Those who still remember the city as Benares, know best what I am talking about. But even there, being a cow had its downsides. Fact is, that the status of being holy did not guarantee a healthy daily meal or two. I remember cows entering road side restaurants to eat the carelessly thrown leaf plates from a corner. Maybe it filled their belly, but they suffered from malnutrition and constant tummy problems. Having grown up on a Swiss mountain farm with healthy cows grazing on green pastures. Our cows were loved and we knew them all by name and understood their individual character and temperament. Honestly, I never understood how a culture could term an animal holy and at the same time abuse it. It seemed to serve the same unholy purpose of proclaiming the owners religiousness, kind of like the altar boys to the pedophile catholic priests.

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Moreover I learned that these animals are kept home, fed and looked after as long as they gave milk. However the moment they fall off milk, they are forced out on the streets. Owners simply turn their animals into public property and hope that they are looked after.

I just want to add that I met farmers with such love for their land and animals that I was touched to my deepest core.