Lakshmi munched on the hay as her master held her down. The transaction had been fixed at 11 am, and it being almost noon, you could already see the truck pulling in.
She was a good cow. She pranced onto the backside of the truck in the Sunday market, with no hassle. Like it was her idea. In our language, there is an adage, my mother’s favorite. “A good cow learns after the first burn.” Lakshmi—the most she demanded was a strike on her backside. But no one could expect she liked her family so much.
So it was a bit of a shock when the boy from the village store came running to the house at 3 pm. Lakshmi had indeed followed the line of cattle, without looking back, as timid as a cow, onto the truck. The master saw this, moments before he was handed three tattered notes for his coin pouch. And the truck backed out into the arid noon. The cow, cooped up, had indeed reached the butcher’s warehouse and her second life. But Lakshmi seemed to have lost her best qualities in her new home.
Lakshmi had calmly walked to the gate of the ranch as they were yet unloading. Right past bigger piles of hay, she trod on. Onto the rocky lane off the highway. Then onto the highway. Like some loose cow you’d see past midnight at the side of a dimly lit city street. The world is a dangerous place for lone cows, like it is for gold left on the front verandah. But none of this struck the dim cow. It had smelt blood, and a lifelong vegetarian, decided to leave with no concern for the poor butcher who spent so much on her. The woman next door cried out.
And now there was a chase right on the highway. Lakshmi didn’t understand much. Which is why the mother had loved her so much—she could pour out her woes without fear of a response besides reliable hunger. But between the stick-wielding stranger chasing her and onward traffic, there wasn’t time for understanding. And so it was a sight to be seen. The cow weaved through sedans and trucks and stray cows like a teenager on his dad’s moped. Or so reported the boy reporting the telephone call reporting this criminal cow. What a silly cow!
Parting with the family cow is difficult. To even make such a decision, the master, his wife, and his little boys had to gather. Her birth had been like a wedding, taken as good omen, earning the name goddess of wealth. The cow is also a divine being in the religion, the mother. And during the drought, the poor cow starved its own to feed the boys. Parting with a cow can rip the home apart. But as the practical mother exclaimed, how dare the donkey try to come back home!
The master’s caste didn’t allow cow slaughter, but he greyed up the ledger with intermediaries. And being the shrewd man he was, he decided at the village telephone that he’d drive up in the neighbour’s tractor from this side and that the butcher would drive down from his. The cow was surely caught.
Lakshmi meandered but persisted on the highway, for she was a cow and not a horse. Until the butcher caught up with her, and running forward, she reached the angered stick-wielding stranger that was once her master. And in a moment of flight, in the eternal solitude of the mother or the goddess of wealth, Lakshmi anxiously leaped over the median.
And the traffic from behind killed her. And no money was lost for it was the butcher’s fault.