Then he adds irritation to my impatience by saying that he will go on his bike to scout out potential cows and take me for the final bidding. I only need to come to pay the money and finish the deal. But I insist that I want to be involved from the very beginning. If I am putting up twelve hundred dollars—the price of the cow has somehow increased in the intervening week—I want to make darn sure that it is a good cow. We go back and forth, squabbling like kids.
Finally, we agree upon a day, and at 10 a.m. we are standing outside my building, waiting for their friend Kuppa, a rickshaw driver, to show up. A few phone calls later, we are on our way to Thanisandra village, close to Bangalore’s new airport. We take a turn into a narrow lane from a bustling main road and suddenly the vibes are different. People walk slower. Courtyards have green cow dung splashed over them, with kolam designs as decoration. Cows stand outside buildings. Women in housecoats lay red chilies out to dry.
We drive to a home where a cow is on sale for eight hundred dollars. It is a brown cow with a slight hump. The cow is of medium build and kept in a nice room inside the house. Selva walks the cow around while discussing how much milk it will give. Muniappa, the seller, clad in a white dhoti, shirt, and turban, says that the cow gives twenty liters per day and then quickly modifies it to seventeen liters per day.
This, I know, is a barefaced lie. The average Indian cow gives four to eight liters per day, tops. In the past, says Sarala, when they bought cows they would come during milking time just to make sure that the cow was giving the milk that the seller said it would. Nowadays, everything is too far away and everyone is too busy.
Selva can tell a cow’s health simply by looking at its teeth and tail. “Cows should wag their tails,” he asserts. “That’s how we know they are relaxed.”
We walk away after some time. Selva tells me that he doesn’t want this cow. It is an Indian breed, a reddish-brown Sindhi cow. Selva is bent on buying a Holstein-Friesian (HF), a hybrid. They cost more, but they give more milk. That is the assumption, anyway.
“Then did we waste time looking at this cow?” I hiss.
“Just because you want a polyester sari doesn’t mean you cannot look at a Kanjivaram silk,” replies Sarala.
To put it another way, just because you want the functionality of a Zara dress doesn’t mean that you cannot enjoy checking out a Valentino or Chanel outfit.
Selva has another, somewhat shocking reason: manners. “We can’t just glance at a cow and walk out,” he says. “It is disrespectful to the animal. Even if I am not going to buy it, I have to at least give it the courtesy of a thorough inspection.”
This from a guy who is uniformly surly to all humans. I guess his parameters of what constitute good comportment are different for cows.
Muniappa offers us milk. Sarala says that we must accept or he will feel bad. Manners, again. So we drink piping hot cow’s milk and start to take our leave. At the last minute, Muniappa jumps into the rickshaw. He knows someone nearby who is selling cows, he says. If he cannot be our seller, he wants to at least be our broker.
Muniappa rides with Kuppa in the driver’s seat. He takes us to a mango orchard nearby. We have to stop the rickshaw and walk the final five minutes through narrow village paths. Finally, we see the cows—a dozen of them—grazing underneath trees filled with green mangoes. Some mangoes have exploded on the ground. Their scent perfumes the air. Cows lie in the shade, chewing their cud. They are the epitome of rural contentment, except we are still technically in the city.
Sarala is elated. “Look at these beauties,” she mutters. “This is how cows should live. Look at them, how free they are. Their milk will be really tasty because they are so happy.”
Selva, too, is suddenly animated. We walk through the shady orchard, examining the cows. Selva grabs some of them, opens their mouths, and stares at their teeth. He pulls and lifts their tails.
All the cows are HF, so their milk production will likely be about the same. Then comes the complicated process of establishing their personalities.
“We have to be careful to buy a cow that is suited to our own dispositions, Madam,” says Sarala. “Otherwise, these cows will simply take charge.”
Sarala and Selva assess cows using a few informal measures. Two cows lying beside each other are viewed benignly because they will fit into the herd. “Look at that cow licking the other cow,” says Sarala, pointing to a pair. “That means that she is naturally easygoing, willing to adjust.”
The cow that stares at us curiously is better than the cows that don’t even look in our direction. “We want animals that are inquisitive; interested in new things. How else will they adapt in a new home? Some of them pine for their old home and won’t eat for days. How will the milk come out if they don’t eat?”
Sarala is worried about buying any cow from such a pristine natural environment because her cowshed is quite literally a dump. She is sure that no cow used to such verdant, broad surroundings will like her cowshed. “Why would you leave a palace like this and live in a hovel?” she asks.
Most of the cows are sunning themselves, enjoying the warmth on their backs and staring into space. “What are they thinking?” I wonder aloud.
As always, Sarala has an answer for everything. “Cows are like Buddha, Madam,” she says. “They can meditate for hours. Just sitting in one spot. Absorbing the sun’s rays.”
I thought only native cows absorbed the sun’s rays.
“All cows absorb the sun’s rays,” says Sarala. “Only native cows know what to do with them. Look at these HF cows. They are happily relaxing under the sun, as if this were a beach.”
Right on cue, the fighting begins. One cow nudges another cow out of its spot. “Hey, hey,” says Selva reflexively, sensing a conflict breaking out. And it does. Both the cows face each other with bowed heads and try to ram their horns into each other.
“People think that all cows are peaceful,” says the running commentator standing beside me. “Look at those two. Like wildcats. Imagine what they will do to my peaceful herd. No way we can buy those two.”
Each cow has individual characteristics. Some are questioning; some are aggressive; some are emotionally volatile; and some are beatific—they seek simple pleasures. They lie in the sun and raise their heads to smell the air. They chew on wet grass with visible pleasure.
We are eager to transact. Muniappa phones the owner of these cows. After some time, an elderly gent rides up on his moped, clad in the white dhoti, white shirt, and white turban that seem to be the uniform in these parts. He parks the bike, jumps off, all in one quick motion, and says immediately, “No selling.”
They cut to the chase, these guys. I’ve noticed that. Niceties are for people with time, and milk producers don’t really have that luxury at their disposal. It is repetitive work that never stops. Right now, at noon, Selva would be cleaning cow dung and getting buckets of water ready for his cows, were he at home. Instead here we are, negotiating with the elderly man, whose name is Ranganna.
“I am keeping these cows,” Ranganna says. With his white stubble, gray hair, and lined face, he looks about sixty, but he is probably younger. “They are for my grandson.”
Animated discussion breaks out. There seems to be some misunderstanding. Our broker wraps his arm around the potential seller’s shoulder, leads him aside, and talks earnestly, massaging his arm the whole time. Even from a distance, we can see our seller shake his head repeatedly.
Ranganna makes a living selling his cows’ milk to the local dairy cooperative. He doesn’t want to sell his cows, he tells us. He only wants to outsource the milking process. He is fed up with waking up at dawn, squatting beside a dozen cows, and carrying the milk to the local cooperative to be weighed and purchased. He wants a younger man to take over and give his arthritic knees a rest. Would Selva be interested in leasing the cows and subcontracting the milking?
Twice a day Ranganna takes the milk from his twelve cows to the local Karnataka Cooperative Milk Producer
s’ Federation (KMF)—much like the one Sarala and I visited a while back—and sells it for fifty cents per liter, about one-third less than what he would get if he sold it directly to consumers. The milk collected from various independent milk producers is combined and taken to rapid cooling plants where it is homogenized and poured into sealed plastic packets. It is these packets that arrive at my local Nandini Milk Booth, from where my milkman picks them up to deliver them across the city. The milk booth is located—ironically—right in front of the cowshed in which Sarala bolts a couple of her cows at night.
Sarala, according to the state of Karnataka, is an independent milk producer. She prefers to sell directly to consumers for a premium price. Sarala has in theory a great business model and makes more money than the average dairy farmer. Yet because Sarala is not insured, a sick cow or family member throws the household finances completely out of whack. The family is perpetually in debt.
Ranganna doesn’t have to spend as much time as Sarala does interacting with and cultivating customers. Besides, everyone in his village has cows. Milk is abundant; customers are not. The cooperative is the only option if he wants to sell his milk.
He asks Selva if the lad will take over milking operations for a monthly salary.
Selva says no. He lives too far away. He cannot drive an hour just to be a paid milker of the elderly man’s cows. He wants movable assets, not a job.
We are at an impasse. We plead with the man to no avail. He is polite but firm.
The four of us get back in the rickshaw and bounce along the winding, country paths. By now it is 1 p.m. We are disgruntled, starving, and thirsty. We see a turbaned man selling coconut water by the side of the road. In front of him is a pile of green coconuts. Selva magnanimously offers to buy us all tender coconut water. As the vendor chops off the tops of the coconut, Selva and I continue squabbling about the wasted morning. Why wouldn’t he phone first and check with the seller if he were indeed selling his cows, I ask.
Selva blames Muniappa, who blames the old gent for backing out.
“That old man told me that he wanted to sell the whole herd,” says Muniappa. “He must have seen this pant-and-shirt Madam and changed his mind.”
They all look at me accusingly. The worst part is that I am not wearing Western clothes with their attendant stereotype of a modern and occasionally foreign city-dweller who doesn’t “get” what they are about. I am in a traditional sari, trying to blend in.
“You want a cow?” asks the dusty, thin coconut vendor.
We look up.
Turns out that the coconut vendor has a cow that he wants to sell for thirteen hundred dollars. He promises to throw in her calf. Where is the cow? we ask skeptically. The coconut vendor waves at the palatial green mansion, standing like a neon gingerbread house amidst the distant fields. That’s my home, he says. Just walk down this path and find my wife. She’ll show you the cow and calf.
We stare at each other, jaws agape. They all speak together in rapid-fire Kannada. At the end, Selva seems satisfied that the coconut vendor indeed has a cow. We get back in the rickshaw. Kuppa makes a U-turn and we go in the face of oncoming traffic till we suddenly veer off into a side lane.
Sarala and I can’t stop talking about the coconut seller. We are wonderstruck that this dusty, bony man selling coconuts by the roadside has not only a large mansion with fields all around but also saleable cows, to boot.
“Why would a man who owns this giant green mansion, fields, and cows want to sell coconuts by the roadside?” I ask in amazement.
“He must have seen all those coconuts on his land going to waste so he probably thought, ‘Why not stand on the road and make some more money?’ ” says Selva.
We walk single file in between the fields and go to the green mansion. An old man comes out. He is the coconut vendor’s father and has the leathery skin of a man who has spent his lifetime outside under the hot sun. When we ask about the cow, he points to the field and says that we will find the animal there, with his daughter-in-law. Selva walks into the tall sugarcane field, whistles, and returns.
In a few minutes, a woman clad in an orange sari comes out. Had I passed her on the road, I would have pegged her (correctly) as a farmer’s wife. I would certainly not have imagined that she was the owner of the green, two-story house, about the size of my suburban split-level in Stamford, Connecticut, spread over ten thousand feet of virgin Bangalore land.
The coconut vendor’s wife leads out her cow. Selva does his thing with examining the teeth and tail. As we walk back to our car, he tells Sarala that he is going to try to negotiate down the price to twelve hundred dollars. He is not hopeful, though.
“These sellers may lower the price by 10 percent, but no more. The cow is young and healthy. Plus there is a calf. The seller is not in dire straits,” says Selva, waving at the green house. “Why will he lower the price?”
His logic is impeccable. We motor back to the coconut vendor. As predicted, he refuses to lower the price.
“I didn’t even plan on selling my cow,” he says. “Just because you people came here with such distress, I thought I’d do you a favor by offering my cow.”
And that is the end of that.
By now it is 3 p.m. None of us has eaten. On the way home, we pass a roadside stand where Selva treats us to some masala peanuts.
“He loves kadalakai [peanuts], my son,” says Sarala, with the same tinge of pride with which she talks about her cows and the Alsatian dog that she has kept and now loves. “Whenever he sees peanuts, he won’t let them go without stopping and buying some.” She has the gift of making commonplace actions sound like achievements. The “Hindi people” and their discriminating palates for her cows’ milk, the Alsatian dog’s ability to bark for its milk, her son’s talent for spotting the fruit carts and peanut vendors with the best products from a mile away—Sarala admires them all. She is an optimist by nature.
On the ride back, I discuss the plan of action with Selva.
“I’ll call around and see if anyone has any cows for sale,” he says. “Shall we go again tomorrow?”
I nod. The lad is learning. He has at least given me a day’s notice.
Over the next few days, we travel to different spots all over the city, either with Kuppa or with their other rickshaw-driver friends to look for a cow. Near Majestic, a crowded neighborhood in the city center named after a movie theater, an entire concrete house has been given up to cows. We peer through the locked grill to see over a dozen cows sitting on the ground with a drain in the middle. A fan whirs above them.
“See how comfortable the owner has made them,” says Sarala admiringly. “Only if they are in this comfort will they give good milk.”
We visit numerous dwellings like this. They look like people’s homes from the outside but are, in fact, homes for cows. In some instances, the family lives on the second floor while the ground floor is for the animals. In others, the family lives in a thatched hut nearby while the government-allotted “low income group” housing unit is given to the cows.
Ram has told me a story about waking up from the dregs of sleep and experiencing a cow sighting in a house like this. When he was about twelve or thirteen, his family home adjoined a slum development with ramshackle huts. During one election cycle, the government upgraded these huts into concrete homes. One morning, Ram woke up, looked out of the window, and stared at the black head of a cow. Actually two. He blinked. The cow mooed in acknowledgement. Or so Ram thought. It was really calling for its owner to come hither and milk. The dairy farmer, who had previously tied his cows outside his hut, had hustled two of his black cows up a flight of stairs and housed them in his government-allotted, one-room house, with the ceiling fan going full blast. There was hay and feed for the animals. The farmer’s wife found it easier to scoop up their dung from a cement floor, with a rake and bucket. The farmer put his animals in the apartment allotted to him, and lived outside in a makeshift hut beside the gutter. Everyone in the slum und
erstood; no one complained to the authorities. The whole thing made perfect sense. You did what was best to increase your livelihood.
Typically when we show up at a home housing cows, Selva calls the owner, who ambles over from a few houses away. He takes out the cow that is on the market, and Selva walks the cow around, despite the whizzing motorbikes everywhere. Most of the city cows are priced at thirteen hundred dollars and at the end of ten minutes, we tell the owner that his price doesn’t “set” for us and take our leave.
After a couple of days of this, Selva and I are both dispirited. Sarala blames our failure on the planets. “I told you that we should have looked for a good day to start this project.”
Indians have a concept called Rahu Kalam, or the “Time of Planet Rahu,” which is considered to be a bad time to begin things. The time of Rahu is memorized through a silly mnemonic: “Mother Saw Father Wearing The Turban Suddenly.” Each time slot is an hour and a half, with the clock beginning at 7:30 a.m. So the bad time on Monday (Mother) would be 7:30 to 9:00, the next would be Saturday (Saw) at 9:00 to 10:30, and so on.
I grew up in a family in which omens were respected, though I have mostly disregarded them since adulthood. My grandparents wouldn’t undertake a journey without considering the shagunam (signs), also called nimitta. It was a three-step process. First they would make sure that the day was good. Then they would choose a time that was not within the Rahu Kalam. Finally, just before setting out, they would look for omens. If a dog scratched its ear as they stepped out, they would come back and sit down for a few minutes, because it indicated failure in the venture. Typically, the cure for such inauspicious omens at the time of departure was to come back and sit down for a few minutes and maybe drink a glass of water. Then you could start again.
As children, we were not allowed to ask the question we most wanted to ask when the grown-ups got ready to leave. “Where are you going?” brought on bad luck as well as clips on our ears. Sneezing, too, was a bad sign and meant that you couldn’t leave right away. Crows cawing meant that unexpected guests were on the way. Conversely, if unexpected guests came, they were greeted with, “It’s going to rain today because you have come.” Hearing the song of a koel was good but seeing one was not. Black crows were a reminder of our ancestors and were fed rice balls and black sesame seeds. The sound of a lizard signaled prosperity.
The Milk Lady of Bangalore Page 14