“They are like our brothers and sisters,” says Sarala, scratching a reddish-brown cow. The cow stares back. I follow suit, stroking her neck and scratching the tender skin behind her ears.
“You remember Kamala, don’t you?” says Sarala’s brother. “See how much she has grown?”
The cow stamps. “Kamala was so attached to my father, poor thing,” Sarala tells me. “And it went both ways. My dad wouldn’t eat till he fed Kamala jaggery. Every single day. When my father was on his deathbed, Kamala tore off the rope that we used to tether her here and ran to our house. She sensed that her master was dying, you see. She stood outside my father’s bedroom window, without moving, for hours till my father passed away in the wee hours of night. She knew that he had died even before any of us knew. She mooed with such agony that it roused the whole household. I was dozing beside my father’s bed. When I heard her moo, I knew, even without looking, that my dad was gone.”
The cowshed is a simple construction, with a thatched roof and mud floor. Bamboo poles hold aloft the roof, except in the back where a brick wall has been built to shelter the cows, or so I think. When we walk outside, I see the real reason for the brick wall: all along the other side are cow-dung patties, stuck like buttons on the wall, drying in the sun.
Wet cow dung is a mess—about the consistency of, well, shit. Here, it is mixed with dry hay to give it the consistency of pizza dough, rolled, and then thrown onto the brick wall so that it dries in the sun—after which it will be used as kindling for fires. Rolling a ball of cow dung and throwing it on a wall involves dexterity, good judgment about the girth of the ball, and a measure of aim. Sarala is good at this but her brother is better. He squats on the ground, swiftly picks up a handful of cow dung and hay, lobs it up and down to shape it into a circle, and then throws it at the wall without even looking. No gloves, no rake, nothing. It makes me squirm to watch him and lends credence to the belief that the human mind can get used to just about anything. Even stinking cow-dung balls.
I watch as the dung sticks to the wall. It is all about balancing gravity and surface tension. If the cow-dung ball is too heavy, gravity pulls it down and it falls off. If the amount of dung is too little, surface tension will not hold it attached to the wall. It has to be just the right amount. Sarala’s brother is also, no surprise, a great ballplayer.
By now, the sun is high in the sky. After walking around some more, it is time for lunch. We sit cross-legged on the floor. A banana leaf is spread out. We eat plantain chips, fried in coconut oil; steaming-hot, red-specked rice, aged in gunnysacks for years; okra sambhar; a dollop of ghee; and several cooked vegetables, freshly picked from the garden. It is the tastiest food I have ever eaten—redolent of Eleven Madison Park, Daniel, The French Laundry, or Jean Georges. Well, those are bad comparisons, for this is rustic food, but any chef concerned with terroir would have loved it.
The flavor comes from slow-cooking the local, freshly picked produce in mud pots over a wood fire. Also, when you serve hot rice and ghee on a banana leaf, it imparts a herbaceous complement, somewhat like what New Zealanders claim about their sauvignon blancs. The women clean up—a sexist exercise steeped in tradition, not just in India but most rural areas. When I rise to help, they all demur but don’t complain too much.
We pick up the banana-leaf “plates” and dump them into an open compost pit. Sarala’s pretty cousin, Sita, picks up a blob of cow dung and tosses it into a bucket. To this, she adds half a bucket of water. Deftly, Sita dribbles the cow dung water all over the floor. She takes a piece of cloth, begins at the top, bends, and sweeps the floor with her hand, creating neat curves on the floor, all with the cow dung paste. I am once again reminded of my cousin Kicha and his Mr. Muscle bottle. Nobody walks on the floor till the paste dries into a solid, greenish-hued substrate atop the already-greenish-hued floor. This is where we will have dinner later that evening, sitting atop the cow-dung-laced mud floor for another meal on a banana leaf.
I can hear the women laughing in the back. Huge peals of it come from the kitchen, loud and free. They have a grace about them, these village women, a sense of leisure and wellness. I attribute it to the homegrown, organic food.
But, as one study shows, perhaps it is the cow dung. Mycobacterium vaccae is a bacteria first discovered in cow dung in Austria. The word vaccae is Latin for “cow dung.” Research has shown that exposure to these bacteria can make people smarter and less depressed. I am not kidding. Two biology professors from Russell Sage College in Troy, New York, presented this finding at a 2010 meeting of the American Society for Microbiology. It was reported with the telling headline, “Can Bacteria Make You Smarter?” Mycobacterium vaccae occurs naturally in soil and cow dung. People who spend time amidst nature and cows are likely to ingest or breathe it in, writes Dorothy Matthews, who conducted this research with her colleague Susan Jenks.
When these bacteria were ingested by mice, it stimulated the growth of neurons that cause increasing levels of serotonin—the feel-good hormone—and thus decreased anxiety in the mice. Since serotonin plays a role in learning, Matthews wondered if M. vaccae could improve learning in mice. Turns out it could. The mice that ingested the bacteria navigated a maze twice as fast and with less anxiety than the control group. Sarala’s relatives wipe their floors daily with cow dung and ingest the bacteria while they eat. No wonder they laugh so hard. It is the serotonin induced by the cow-dung bacteria, layered over the floor after every meal over years and years.
Sarala and her family have gone and seen the two sisters. They come back subdued.
“Their faces are shaped weirdly, Madam,” says Naidu. “We cannot get our boys married to girls with odd-shaped faces.”
Sarala too is oddly silent. She takes me aside and says, “Do you mind if we leave right away?”
I nod my head.
“Naidu is right,” she says and then immediately contradicts herself. “But he is impractical.”
By now, I am used to this. Sarala’s world is never black and white, right and wrong. It is all about gradations and tradeoffs, choosing between imperfect solutions.
“These village girls won’t work for my boys. They are country breeds, you see. My boys are crossbreeds. It will be hard if I marry a native cow to them. Won’t set. But the thing is that these girls are sisters. They will have each other for company—to complain about their husbands. It may work. Plus, how long to keep on searching for a bride for these boys? We still have Selva to get married off.”
I cannot tell if she intends to pursue the alliance or not. After saying goodbye, we load the van with baskets of peanuts, chickens, and fresh produce. Sarala promises to return in a few weeks.
21
Three Weddings and a Passing
Some months later, Sarala shows up at my door with a wedding invitation. She has decided on the two sisters for her middle two boys, she says cheerily. The wedding is in their village. I look at the date and apologize right away. I have a work trip that I cannot cancel, I tell Sarala. She doesn’t seem too upset, maybe because I don’t know her middle two boys. So I put a cash gift for each of the boys in an envelope, beg my kids to create a happy wedding-day card—on which they draw elaborate flowers, birds, and the sun rising between the hills—and take it to Sarala across the street. She genially protests and then accepts the envelope.
Sarala and I don’t see each other for a while after that. She doesn’t come to the milking spot regularly. Naidu tells me that Sarala is busy with wedding preparations. Only Selva comes. He is the object of much good-natured teasing.
“After your two elder brothers get married, it’s your turn,” say the army wives. “Just you wait. Your parents will finish off your marriage before you blink.”
Selva has mellowed. He merely grins when we gang up on him. No snarls or scowls from him these days.
Two years pass in a flurry of transitions. My elder daughter graduates from high school and leaves for college in the United States. When my father-in-law becomes
sick, my in-laws give up their home in Kerala and move into a furnished apartment in our building complex. We drop off my daughter at Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh, where she wants to study engineering. I stop buying milk from Sarala. There is less time to walk across the street. It is easier to buy packet milk.
I notice only two cows come these days. I see them when I walk my younger daughter to school in the morning. I never see Sarala, and Selva, too, has stopped coming. In his place is an old man who wears a checked blue lungi (sarong) to squat and milk. Naidu stands next to him, talking desultorily. The customers who once thronged around Sarala have been reduced to a trickle.
I usually wave at Naidu from across the street, but one day I go over to catch up. Selva is driving an auto-rickshaw these days, says Naidu. They want a “respectable” profession for him. They are readying him for a good marriage. I had assumed Sarala was either visiting her village to scout for a bride or staying home to take care of her grandson, but Naidu informs me that they have rented a Seven Eleven – type corner shop and that Sarala is manning it.
“We only have four cows now,” he says. “I take care of them all.”
“Is my cow there?” I ask, worried that they may have sold her or, worse, that she has died.
Naidu smiles. “Of course, Madam. She is the best milker. Why don’t you go the cowshed and have a look at her?”
“I won’t recognize her,” I say.
“She will recognize you.”
I nod. It is too complicated to explain to him that I have no time to go to the cowshed. And we are all petrified of catching infections these days, lest we pass it on to my father-in-law.
“Tell Sarala I asked after her,” I say.
“You should go and see the shop,” replies Naidu.
Sarala’s shop is right behind my apartment complex, he says, on the main road across from Ulsoor Lake.
One December morning, my father-in-law passes away. The rituals we perform after his death link me once again back to cows. Different cultures and religions deal with grief differently. We all discover that Hinduism is very forward-looking, quite literally. After cremating the dead, for instance, the living are instructed to walk away without looking back. Another ritual involves sprinkling ashes in holy rivers. We choose the nearby Kaveri River and drive two hours with my father-in-law’s ashes in tow. There, too, the priest tells Ram to go shoulder-deep into the water, throw the clay pot containing the ashes over his head, and return to shore without looking back.
Every day, the priest comes to our home for an hour of morning services. On the fifth day, he recites Sanskrit mantras and rolls a coconut on the floor. The coconut is in lieu of a cow, he says. “You can catch the tail of a cow and walk all the way up to the heavens,” he says. “That is why a cow is so important in Hinduism.”
Hindu mythology (the Garuda Purana, to be precise) describes a river called Vaitharani that lies between the earth and the world of Yama, the Hindu god of death. It is similar to the river Styx in Greek mythology or the Sanzu River in Japanese Buddhist mythology—a watery passage that souls must cross on their way to heaven. The Vaitharani, though, is fear-inducing: full of blood, pus, crocodiles, moss, stench, whirlpools, and bones, and surrounded by flesh-eating birds. Sinners have a tough time even contemplating navigating it.
There are a few things, though, that can help all of us: fasting on certain holy days, like Ekadasi and Sivarathri, and doing good deeds, such as donating a cow. If we wish, says the priest, he can arrange for a cow donation. There is a village outside Bangalore that is full of Brahmin dairy farmers. He can arrange to take us there to donate a cow.
My husband says that we will consider it and we leave it at that. He does not say, “Been there, done that!”
Some months later, I go for an evening walk to the nearby Ulsoor Lake when a familiar voice hails me.
“Madam, how are you?” exclaims Sarala from inside a small shop.
I stop in my tracks and grin at her. We are delighted to see each other. Sarala ushers me into the tiny space and plies me with food and drink: a bottle of soda, some chocolates, orange juice, tea, all in succession. I say no, but she hands me the bottle of juice and insists that I take it home. She asks after my family. Somehow she knows that my father-in-law has passed away. One of the building security guards mentioned it to Naidu, who told her, she says. She offers her condolences and we sit quietly together.
Finally I ask after her family. Sarala is bursting with news.
“Do you know? I have readied a bride for Selva,” says Sarala proudly. “She is my elder brother’s daughter.”
“How so?” I ask, knowing that “elder brother” can mean “distant cousin” in the convoluted context of Indian relationships.
It turns out to be exactly that. Sarala’s distant cousin has a daughter who is now betrothed to Selva.
“Did Selva and the girl know each other? Were they childhood playmates?” I ask.
“No, he didn’t know her. She is a village girl, you see.”
Sarala shows me a photo of the girl. She is wearing a blue sari and is slim and lovely looking. I tell Sarala and Naidu, who has just come in, so.
They nod and sigh, and I get the feeling that they aren’t quite thrilled with the match but are making the best of the situation. Selva, whom I have known for ten years, is now twenty-eight. Time for him to get married.
What needs to be done? I ask. How can I help?
The financials around Selva’s wedding dictate its location. If they pay four thousand rupees (sixty dollars), the priest at a local temple will officiate and conduct all the religious rituals. After that, they plan to host a lunch for some one hundred fifty people at the Tamil Sangam building, which stands right beside their shop.
As we speak, a crowd of customers keeps coming and going. Like at the milking station, Sarala has complex relationships with her customers. One couple spends half an hour with her, negotiating the price of a spare counter-table that she has at home. They want to start a shop just like Sarala’s but don’t have the money. The wife says that she plans to take her gold wedding chain to the pawnshop and get cash. Sarala and Naidu give them advice and tips. Make sure that the gold chain has proper markings, says Sarala. Else, these pawnbrokers will palm off an inferior copy of your chain when you go back to retrieve it. Naidu promises to hook up the young man with Senthil, who has experience renting shops.
A young college girl who looks like my daughter comes in to buy Pepsi. Sarala pulls out a Coke bottle from the fridge. She picks the bottles by color, not lettering. “The other brown bottle, Auntie,” says the girl. As Sarala fumbles inside the fridge, the girl adds, “Okay, why don’t you give me a green Sprite bottle?”
“Why don’t you eat properly instead of drinking all this sugary junk?” says Sarala.
Two army wives come to get milk from the familiar stainless-steel bucket that Sarala has placed behind the counter. “Even if I move away, these army ladies will not leave me,” she says with a grin.
The army wives and I catch up as well. It is just like being back at the milking station with Sarala. They are aghast that I have sent my (unmarried) daughter away to America. “Why would you send your girl all alone to a place so far away?” asks one.
“You cannot trust that country,” says another. My shoulders stiffen as I feel another round of what my brother calls “too-brutal honesty” coming on. “Just you watch. Your daughter will show up with a boyfriend. It is all too common in that land.”
Sarala comes to my rescue. “It is getting common even here,” she says. “My kids and your kids may agree to arranged marriages, but all these school kids who come to my shop—for them, boyfriend-girlfriend is the norm.”
She admonishes a student in school uniform when he asks for a cigarette. “Why don’t you spend your money on textbooks instead?” she says.
Cigarettes are the most popular item. Young men and women buy a single cigarette, sometimes two or four, sometimes menthol, but never a ful
l pack, which, at two hundred fifty rupees—about four dollars—is expensive for the student types that I see in the store. Sarala says that she does a good business in cigarettes, to the point where the cigarette companies have given her the fridge and flat-screen TV inside the shop. A candy company paid for the gaudy awning in front with dark and gold chocolate and the words Cadbury’s Milk Chocolate written across it.
“You will come for Selva’s wedding, won’t you?” Sarala asks. It is a month away.
I wouldn’t miss it for the world. As I get ready to leave, I remember something that Ram has been wanting to do.
“I am looking for a go-shala with native cows,” I tell Sarala. “I don’t want to go far away. Do you know any?”
I don’t tell her that my husband and I want to do something for native Indian cows—not the HF ones that Sarala owns—in my father-in-law’s memory.
“Go to the Hare Krishna ashram,” says Sarala immediately. “Near Hebbal. It is full of desi cows.”
The Hare Krishna ashram has a small go-shala—only a dozen cows, but each is a beauty. There are four Gir cows from Gujarat with shiny, red skin, drooping ears, and sweet dispositions. Ram and I tell the monk sitting behind a counter right next to the cows that we want to do something in my father-in-law’s name. There are many options. We can feed one cow for a day or year, or five cows or the entire herd for a specific number of days. We choose to feed the entire herd for three days. I spend fifteen minutes nuzzling the Gir cows. I have not seen such gorgeous specimens even at all the places I visited with Sarala.
The monk offers us some of their milk. “It is like amrit,” he says. The nectar of immortality.
I buy two liters, go home, and boil it. The next day, I try it with my morning coffee. The monk is right. Not too thick or too thin, just fragrant enough, the milk is balanced just right.
It is delicious.
The Milk Lady of Bangalore Page 20