The Cow and the City of Joy!

On a recent visit to my ancestral village, I was taking a reluctant stroll on the village by-lanes when I saw a cow walking a few yards ahead of me. It was walking in a slow and swinging motion and I was engrossed in the rural beauty all around me, when suddenly, the cow started to poop! I stopped and set aside so as to avoid getting splatterred by the slime, and oh! then it started to pee! Good. The disgusted me told myself - well, perhaps what differneciates animals from us humans is not just the number of legs and that they have a tail and we don't. They could also just throw out anything they need to, right where they are, when they need to! No worry of who's watching, who's covered in his shit or whose pleasurable evening stroll might be ruined due to his refuse.

Then I returned to the city I call home. As I was hurrying to catch my train to work the next day, I saw a mother and her child walking in front of me. She was taking her to the school and perhaps the kid did not have the time to have her breakfast at home, so, the mom was feeding her a cake and orange juice. I was thinking how lucky we had been as kids and was envying the kid for being pampered by her mom, but just then the kid finished her cake and the mom threw the empty packet right there on the sidewalk. I stopped and set aside so as to avoid slipping on the packet, and oh! the mom then threw the empty bottle of juice on the corner of the metro station and climbed down the staircase. I paused and looked around and saw a shameless man relieving himself on the walls of the metro station entrance while talking on his cell-phone, a maid servant throwing a packetful of domestic kachra on the sidewalk from her doorway and then the driver of a bus vomitting gutkha spit on the roads! I could not help but think of the cow and its dung.

Although I have hardly lived here, but I love Kolkata much more than many others. I request all of you who live here and walk or drive on its streets, to pause once in a while and see how many times you are reminded of the fact that there indeed are some differences between man and animals, other than the number of legs and a tail.