Holy Cow

Note: If Bessie the Cow is reading this, please stop. The last thing we need is for you to learn that your Indian brethren are holier than thou.

Two things India has a lot of is hungry people and cows. It did not take long before I started to put the pieces together. Hungry people. Cows. Hungry. Cows. Wait wait, I think I have an idea.

It is a little hard for a westerner to understand the India relationship with cows. Do people really worship them? Are there actually government run shelters for homeless or unloved cows? Don’t cows belong on farms and not in bus terminals? And don’t they want to eat grass instead of garbage?

The best lens I can thing of is man's best friend. Some people dress them up in silly clothes and enter them in silly contests and spend lots and lots of money to get a certain breed or so they can be healthy.

And if someone offered you a genuine dog-skin leather jacket, well that would be creepy. Even if you are a cat lover, still, eeewww.

And if you saw a dog in the city, well, that would be normal. If someone pointed that dogs are a lot like wolves and wolves live in the forest, well, that does not matter. Some canines live in the forest and some live in the woods.

And what they should eat? Clearly dogs in nature do not thrive on cat poo, but again, city dogs are different, and clearly what they love, for reasons that make no sense to us, is cat poo. And the government cow homes are no different than the SPCA.

Finally, the reincarnation thing with cows. I think my brother made the best analogy with comparing it to having a wafer and wine turn into the body and blood of Jesus Christ .