Till the Cows Come Home

Out here in the countryside where I work, apart from the clean air, an unhurried life there are a lot of things worth knowing just for fun. Not only are there less people per square kilometer here, there probably would be one buffalo or cow for every five people. In statistician’s lingo the buffalo/cow to people ratio would be 1:5 which is quite a favorable ratio when you look at it from certain angles which I will come to shortly. This favorable ratio means that if one is living in the countryside one gets to hear the bellowing of cattle, people milking buffaloes or cows, stacks of hay etc. One also gets an abundant supply of milk, curds, ghee and the like. It also means there is an abundance (overabundance, if you ask me) of dung. One needn’t go very far if one happens to be in need of cow dung whatever the purpose be. Sometimes one can find it right in one’s courtyard.

Last week people hereabouts (that is in Andhra Pradesh) celebrated the festival of Sankranti. It is a festival when men do not have anything particular to do except eat all the goodies prepared by the women. The children fly kites and the women spend half the morning drawing intricate rangolis in front of their homes. Sankranti is perhaps the only time when women who otherwise don’t have anything, even remotely, to do with cow dung suddenly need it very badly. They beg, cajole or even threaten their maidservants to bring a dollop of dung on Sankranti. In the countryside all a woman has to do to get some cow dung is to step outside the house to find all the cow dung one wants. But in a city, especially a city like Hyderabad, obtaining even a tiny amount of cow dung is an impossible task. One can perhaps get gold more readily and easily than cow dung.


Normally cow dung isn’t an important part of daily life in the city. But during Sankranti it tops of the list of ‘Most Wanted’ items which presents many problems. In Hyderabad the cow/buffalo to people ration must be something like 1:25,00,000, that is, one buffalo or cow for every 2.5 million persons. One cannot find cowdung for love or money unless one is living in areas like Amberpet or Afzal Gunj where the Musi flows past. One can find a couple of emaciated cows near vegetable markets and that’s it. There was a time when herds of buffaloes crossing the road to wade into the Hussainsagar Lake would cause traffic to stop for a few minutes. But now the scene’s changed. One gets to see buffaloes and cows only on National Geographic. So, one can imagine the plight of the housewife who wants to put a couple of blobs of cow dung as part of her rangoli. With just a couple of hundred cows and buffaloes for a population that’s in tens of millions, there’s bound to be a demand-supply problem of cow dung. But there are always people to help out- maidservants.

I have no idea how our maidservant did it but she managed to get her hands on some prime quality fresh cow dung that she proudly brought home. Sometimes I think the housewives underestimate their maidservants. It made my mom happy. I was more happy. Ever since I’ve been posted in the country side my mother always tells me to bring stuff like groundnuts, guavas, custard apple when I come home for the weekend. Luckily, she did not tell me to bring me you know what.