She loves and tends to them, and her cows return the favor. They know everything about their caregivers. They can gauge the future and foretell death.
“My grandmother had a beautiful, black cow,” says Sarala. “One day, she slipped and fell. We all thought that it was a simple sprained foot, at the most a fracture. The ayurvedic doctor told her to take bed rest. We all went off to work. Not the cow. She came and stood outside my grandmother’s window and began weeping. Would not leave the place. For ten days, she stood there. That’s when we realized that it was serious. Turns out that my grandmother had hit her head on the floor when she fell. Brain damage. She died twenty days later. The cow knew it from the beginning.”
Cows may foretell death, but they also give life. When the gods and demons searched for the nectar of immortality, called amrit, they were told to churn the ocean of milk (ksheera sagara). A cow, Kamadhenu, sprang out of the ocean—as the harbinger of immortality. And it isn’t just ancient mythology. A local folk tale tells of a cow called Punyakoti, meaning “millions of merits.” The cow asks a hungry tiger to spare her life just for a few hours. I have a hungry calf at home, she says. Let me go back to my village, feed my calf, tell her that I will die, and then return to you. Ha, says the tiger. Like I believe that. The cow promises. I never go back on my word. Ask anyone. Finally, the tiger relents. The cow goes back to the village, feeds her calf for the last time, and tells the other cows to take care of her young. After a weeping, bleating farewell, she returns to the tiger, who is shocked that this cow has kept her word. Rather than kill any more beasts, he jumps off the cliff and commits suicide.
The Sanskrit word for cow is go, and cows are venerated as Go-matha, or “Cow-mother.” Cows are maternal, for sure, but they can also be warriors, saints, martyrs, and mistresses. In the Ramayana, a mighty king, Vishwamitra, appears with his army at the hermitage of the sage, Vasishta. The king and his army are stunned to see a huge banquet laid out with fruits, milk dishes, and sweets, all of which are given by the wish-fulfilling cow, Sabala. The king wants the cow. No way, says the sage. The army tries to take the cow by force. The cow vanquishes the army by turning into a bovine fighting machine. She emits arrows and spears from her horns, burning coals from her tail, conjures up a variety of fighters from various parts of her body. She wins against Vishwamitra, who abdicates his kingdom and does penance to become a sage.
German Indologist Hermann Jacobi explains why Hindus venerate the cow in an essay printed in the Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, a sprawling series of books published in the 1920s. He writes that Hindu belief in the sanctity of the cow “seems to have been inherited by the Indians from prehistoric times, before they and the Iranians had separated.” Which is another way of saying that the earliest Indians originated in Iran. These Indo-Iranian tribes called themselves Aryans, from the Sanskrit word arya (a designation indicating nobility, honor, and respect). These nomadic herders crossed over the Hindu Kush Mountains to encounter the Indus Valley Civilization in the plains of what is now Pakistan and Northwest India. Once these Aryans settled in India, they wrote the four Vedas, Hinduism’s earliest texts, and hence came to be called Vedic Indians. Vedic Indians were Hindus. Christianity, Judaism, and Islam came much later to the continent. Today, not all Indians consider the cow holy; only the 80 percent Hindu majority does.
The “Go Suktham” (“Verses on the Cow”) in the Rig Veda begins simply: “For our health and welfare, let the cows of all ages, sizes, and progeny come and stay in our home.” For Hindus, the cow epitomizes compassion and goodness, offering a veritable cornucopia of life-giving products that promote health and healing.
Prior to their passage to India, the Aryans, or Indo-Iranian tribes, worshipped a divine being called Geus Urvan, or Goshurun (literally, “the soul of the cow”), who is regarded as the personification and guardian of living beings according to Jacobi. This belief in the sacredness of the cow persisted as they moved into a new continent. And persists amongst a large portion of their descendants to this day.
Sarala thinks that her cows are keeping her family happy. “These young girls—my daughter-in-law, for example—don’t realize that, Madam,” she says. “They don’t understand the importance of the cows, and what they give to the family. They want to work in an office.”
As she talks, Sarala walks amidst her cows, scratching behind their ears. Her voice is soft and soothing.
“What do you do?” she asks about a year after we have met.
“I am a writer.”
“Do you make a good living?”
“Good enough.”
“How much salary do you get?”
I pause. In India, I am used to intensely personal questions. I don’t necessarily want to reveal my income to my milk woman.
“Not much. All my salary goes to pay off my home loan,” I say casually.
Sarala nods sympathetically. “Just drink some warm milk. You will feel better.”
For Sarala, the road to salvation is paved with warm milk.
Sarala means “easy” in Sanskrit, but her life is anything but. Like many of India’s 200 million poor, she is beset with troubles. On any given day, she has to deal with alcoholic men, absconding sons, leaky roofs, or a constipated cow.
It is this last problem that comes to my attention one morning. I stand in front of the line, vessel in hand, and watch Selva milk. A few army wives are trickling out of their quarters to join the queue. The normally placid cow is shaking its head and making weird snorting noises. I gaze into her beautiful, distressed eyes. It is obvious that something is wrong.
“She won’t urinate,” Sarala says. “I think she has piles.”
I nod. Can a cow have piles? And is that connected to non-urination—or the liquid version of constipation, anyway?
Sarala clears her throat. “Do you have any spare cash?” she asks. “I need to take her to the doctor.”
“How much?” I ask.
She wants one thousand rupees, or about fifteen dollars. It isn’t a lot of money but it is, I know, the beginning of a loan cycle that will never end. Seeing me hesitate, Sarala quickly adds, “I’ll give you free milk till I repay the loan.”
I loan her the money. How can I say no? This is India, after all. Cows are sacred. And she does give me the free milk till her loan is paid back.
5
The Myths Around Milk
Is it because we begin our lives with milk? Is that why milk is considered sacred in several cultures, not just in Indian culture? The Greek goddess Hera spilled her breast milk and created not a wardrobe malfunction, but the Milky Way. When her husband Zeus lusted after a beautiful maiden called Europa, a jealous Hera turned Europa into a white cow and drove her into the continent that bears that name and made the term cow into an epithet to be forever used by jealous women and angry men. Not a woman to be trifled with, our Hera.
The Old Testament mentions the “land that floweth with milk and honey” over a dozen times, always in a positive way. Judaism prohibits milk and meat to be mixed or eaten together. The Koran contains a passage about the origin and importance of milk: “And surely in the livestock there is a lesson for you . . . ” The Ramadan fast is traditionally broken with dates and a glass of milk.
Milk is part of cultural slang (“to milk someone”).
“The milk of human kindness,” wrote Shakespeare in Macbeth.
“As pure as milk,” goes the expression.
Well, perhaps not so pure anymore. Milk has become a minefield with respect to nutrition. Current medical literature blames milk for everything from iron deficiency and colic to Type 1 diabetes and some kinds of cancers. Vegans believe that milk poisons the body. Most ancient cultures believed the opposite. They got their protein from milk and its byproducts. The Turkish salty sheep’s-milk cheese beyaz peynir and the Indian cheese paneer both hark back seven thousand years to when Neolithic populations attempted to tap the high nutritional punch of milk by converting it into easily digested cheese
. Indian literature views milk as a benign super food. Ayurveda touts milk products as calming and healing. Elders sometimes fast by consuming nothing but milk or they break a strict fast with a glass of milk.
Priests perform rituals on a stomach empty of all nourishment except for milk, which is okay to drink. It is above ritual, above rules, and all about faith. Ritual offerings of milk and yogurt are customary in Hindu temples.
Religion is filled with animals of all sorts, not just cows. White horses, such as Pegasus, feature prominently in Greek, Celtic, Slavic, and Indian mythology. Birds abound: as messengers, soothsayers, and predictors of good or bad events. But cows are imbued with particular qualities in Indian mythology. They nurture and save humans. They exude a certain patience, an acceptance. Some have said a “maternal acceptance.” But I know that motherly acceptance is mostly an oxymoron. Mothers can be cheerleaders and champions but they also push and nag in ways that are the opposite of acceptance. Mothers are annoying—I say this as both a mother and a daughter—and not necessarily accepting.
Sarala is a tranquil and calm mother. I can tell. Her sons circle around her like moons. Their chronic lack of money hasn’t cleaved the family apart. Quite the opposite, in fact. A dozen people live in Sarala’s one-room tenement: she and her husband, Naidu; their first son, Senthil, and his wife; their remaining three sons (one of whom is not her biological son but was born to her cousin; Sarala has raised him); and her brother’s family of four. Her brother married a first-cousin and they had “slow children,” says Sarala. It had to do with their blood group being Rh positive.
“We didn’t know at first. But when the first child was born, we could tell that something was wrong with him. So, we roamed around from hospital to hospital seeking help so they could have more healthy children,” says Sarala. “Short of a full blood transfusion for my brother, the doctors said that they could do nothing. We couldn’t afford blood transfusion. We told my brother and sister-in-law to abstain. But how can you stop God’s will? My sister-in-law got pregnant again. What could we do? We prayed to God and left it all in His hands. Their second child was a daughter; a beautiful girl. She is . . . ” Sarala shakes her head and purses her lips. “She is the same way, too. My brother almost went mad when he had these two children. He started drinking and, even now, you can find him lying near a ditch—completely drunk. My sister-in-law stares into space like she is dead. But what can you do?”
Sarala took in her mentally disabled niece and nephew along with their parents. The kids are ten and nine years old now, she says.
“Do you know any special school that will have them?” she asks. “At least for a few hours so my sister-in-law can go and work? How will she feed the family otherwise?”
Sarala’s frequent requests used to irritate me. Now, I merely exhale and nod.
Yes, I say. I will look for a special school for her niece and nephew. I keep it in the back of my head. I know that Sarala won’t hold me to it, that she won’t even bug me about her request because there will come another crisis in her life and she will move on from this one. To her, friendship is about the sharing of woes. She vents to me about her life and listens to me with empathy.
The thing is that Sarala has a porous sense of self. She would help me if she could and asks for help when she needs it. The notions of personal space and boundaries are not so meaningful to her, living as she does with a dozen people. Sharing information and assistance is part of who she is. The army wives constantly ask her for advice on healing through herbs—naatu vaidhyam, it is called, or “country medicine.”
One day, she brings an egg curry that she has made for a pregnant army mother. “It will give you warmth during this cold winter,” she says.
When I complain of a backache, she shows up at my doorstep with what appears to be white, wobbly custard. “One of my cows just gave birth. This is the first milk of the cow. It will give your back strength,” she says.
Turns out that the sweet milky substance that Sarala has given me is colostrum, the first milk that a cow feeds its calf. It is filled with nutrients and antibodies.
Sarala assures me that she isn’t depriving the calf. “We only take a small amount of leftover, after the calf has drunk its fill,” she says.
I take the stainless-steel container hesitantly, not wanting to offend her. Sarala has told me that it is sweet and that I should just swallow it like custard. I don’t feel like eating a cow’s colostrum.
When our cook, Geeta, sees the dish, she gasps. “Do you know how hard it is to get this?” she asks. “Dairy farmers in the village charge a lot for this dish. It is like gold. To think that she gave it to you for free!” There is respect in Geeta’s eyes for my milk woman.
The colostrum signifies a change in our relationship. There is a lot more give and take. When I casually mention that I have guests for dinner, Sarala throws in an extra liter of milk, no charge.
On some days, I follow Sarala into the army compound. As a civilian, I am not welcome there. When I accompany Sarala, however, I am waved inside. We go in together, one evening, before the milking. One of her customers has told Sarala that there is some fresh grass growing on the far end of the campus. Under normal circumstances, Sarala would lead her cows in to eat the grass, but they are barred for a few days because the military rookies are laying a new pathway and don’t want to be bothered by cows trampling and shitting all over their work. So she and I walk into the sunset, searching for the spot. In her hand, Sarala has a scythe, a beautiful instrument with curved teeth, perfect for cutting grass.
Children play in the spacious playground, about the size of a city block—a luxury in space-starved Bangalore. Two army wives in caftans sit on their stoop, chatting. We talk with them for a few minutes and then find the lush patch of grass. “Look at this,” Sarala croons. “My cows are going to be so happy.”
With even strokes, Sarala uses her scythe and cuts the grass for her cows. “Poor things! They stand outside, looking at me with large eyes, waiting for fresh grass. This will invigorate my babies.”
As she works, she points out a variety of greens: one that is good for the eyes, a creeper that alleviates pain in the knee joints, and a leaf that will bring down blood sugar if chewed. “For every disease, nature has created a cure in its leaves and plants,” says Sarala. Within minutes, she has pulled a variety of wild greens and set them beside the bale of fresh grass.
“Take two red chilies,” says Sarala without preamble, as she usually does when she gives me her recipes. “Two cloves of garlic, a piece of ginger. Nicely wash the greens, chop them up. Sauté the greens in a little oil. Garnish with some cumin seeds. Eat it hot with rice and ghee.”
“Are you sure?” I ask. What if these greens are poisonous? Will I die?
“Why are you getting scared?” Sarala says scornfully. “Would I poison you? I take these greens and make them for my family. Because you are my friend, I am giving them to you.”
I ask her what she is making for dinner. She has asked her daughter-in-law to mix some dough for rotis, she says. She plans to chop up some cabbage and mix it with the dough. They have guests and she needs to whip up something special.
“Are they here for long?” I ask.
Sarala nods. A week.
I raise my eyebrows. A week is a long time in their busy lives.
“What to do, Madam?” says Sarala. “We only seem to get guests who stay for long, not the kind who leave quickly.”
We talk desultorily. It is lovely. The setting sun is still warm on our backs as we squat on the earth. In the distance, I can hear the screams of joyful children. A brahminy kite (Haliastur indus) swoops low to the ground. It is looking for snakes, Sarala tells me. The raptor’s eyes are like binoculars. It can zoom in on snakes from a mile high. The trees sway gently in the breeze. Barbets, Asian koels, parakeets, and blackbirds chirp all around.
“It is so peaceful here,” I tell Sarala.
“Come in the morning and do some rounding [wal
king around] of the field like these army wives do,” she urges. “It is good for health. You can sleep on an expensive bed stuffed with money and cover yourself in a designer velvet bedspread. All that is useless if you don’t have health. Walking amidst these trees will give you good health.”
“The guards won’t let me in,” I reply.
“Tell them you want to go to the temple,” says Sarala, pointing to the tiny temple in the premises, where a group of ladies is sitting and singing bhajans.
I am remarkably relaxed. As relaxed, I would like to say, as I am with a good friend. But the truth is that Sarala is not my friend. We spend time together, but there are large chunks of her life that I know nothing about and there are entire chunks of my life that she is unaware of. She and I have a bond, though, the shape of which is evolving. My conversations with her are so comfortable because they are wrapped in genuine affection and because they are without agenda. Then again, this is not true. We have agendas, Sarala and I. Hers is to figure out what she can use me for, whether it is to find a special school for her niece and nephew or find more customers for her milk from within my building. Mine is to figure out how to learn as much as I can from her. At the end of the day, though, I cherish my relationship with Sarala. With Sarala, I can let my mind expand. I can say the first thing that comes to me without fear of judgment or retribution.
That night, I try Sarala’s recipe. The greens are soft and juicy and not bitter at all. Warmed by the sun, protected by tall grass, pulled out of the earth by the expert hands of my milk lady, and carried across the compound by me straight from earth to fire, they are the best greens I have ever tasted.
The Milk Lady of Bangalore Page 5