Dear friends in FIAPO, I am writing this share with you something sad and astonishing.
Yesterday I was walking a dog through my village down by the khets.
The two buffalos that I always look forward to seeing in their tiny little plot were not to be seen. Getting old, must have been time for slaughter.
But there was a new mother…a new buffalo with her baby tied out of reach.
The mother buffalo was insane with frustration. She was bellowing–a roar it was–a scream of anguish to get to her baby– and repeatedly banging her head on the tree to which she was tied with a chain just two feet long.
I ran down to the khets to find her owner. He was out smoking his chillum distantly.
I told the women nearer the road that the cow was in real trouble. They smiled and kept picking the subjis.
I screamed at a nearby boy to get the owner–to tell him the cow is really going to break her horns on the tree. The ladies still smiled and didn’t move. Finally I yelled at the kid to go get him (I couldn’t leave my dog)…
The man slowly walked up seeing me, (I guess because he saw me; he totally knew she was in agony;) he cut the rope. She was hysterical. She flew over the barrier wall and ran down the road (my direction; I jumped a rock boundary wall) and ran a bit more, slipped, laid down and closed her eyes and DIED RIGHT THEN AND THERE.
Friends, the tree she had been tied to–a big tree–had been half destroyed by her wretched struggle. My neighbor told me casually “oh she had been screaming like that all night. Pagal.”
My heart broke into a thousand pieces. Everyone who passed her apparently knew her agony. She wasn’t pagal, she was desperate to get to her child. Is a mother crazy who is desperate for her child?
What is education, anyway? What even IS it when everyone sees such torment and ignores it?
The woman who owns that cow then cried buckets of tears. She was crying only for the lost paise. What torment the cow had gone through was nothing special to her. She was one of the gossipers just 50 meters from the torture chamber.
Now the baby is alone.
Sometimes slaughterhouses do have glass walls, and people see inside them and smoke a bidi and carry on with their gossip.
It was one of the strangest and most horrific experiences of my life and I thank God I have you –some known to me, so many unknown–friends who would grieve for this mother with me. I feel slightly less devastated with you to share this with.
Every drop of cow’s milk we take was produced for a calf, not for you. Consider that you took it from the baby. Tastes bad, the heart can’t stand the taste.
Erika
Hiranmay Karlekar