The cow who cries

It must be nice to be a cow in the western world. To live comfortably on more than two dollars a day, to know that you are better off than a lot of Indians (forget Indian cows) living below the poverty line.

It must be nice to be fed instead of having to scavenge in garbage along with low-life like cats and dogs – always in danger of being knocked down by a careless motorcyclist or being bitten by a village dog; nice not to look like someone out of a concentration camp.

It must be nice not to be treated like shit while your shit itself is treated with tender loving care, plastered on walls and floors, used as manure and as fuel for cooking. Nice not to have your urine praised as a panacea for all ills including cancer while you yourself slowly waste away.

It must be nice not to be a symbol: of mother earth, of fertility, of crooked political bosses, of India, of Hinduism. Never to have communal riots in your name. Never to be dressed up and paraded through the village and have people worship you as a goddess.

It must be so nice just to be a regular unholy cow.

And to be happy and to have pictures of you laughing on cartons of cheese.

I look at the sad scrawny cow who’s been standing still and staring passively at nothing at all for the last half an hour, and I wonder if she’d be thinking all that if she could think. Or would it be: At least I'm not a hamburger.