Sacred Cows Are Wily Too;

Just Try Catching One

1998 NEW DELHI JOURNAL

By BARRY BEARAK, NEW DELHI

copyright, New York Times

It takes eight men to capture a street-smart cow, so the municipal cow
catchers of New Delhi must squeeze together tightly in the cab of their
cattle truck. There are two parts to their important job and only one is
easy: finding the cows. Getting the beasts into the truck is where these
workers really earn their $119 a month. It is estimated that 40,000
cows wander the streets of this city, and most seem well informed of
their sacred status. They are a study in nonchalance, slowly crossing a
highway or, as many prefer, relaxing in the right-turn lane of a busy
intersection. The 100 or so cow catchers employed by the city have
always thought their occupation a merciful one, saving sanctified
creatures from a run-in with a front bumper. "It is necessary if
misunderstood work," said Raman Kumar Sharma, a crew chief. "Sometimes
people do not realize we have the cow's best interests at heart. We've
had violence with the crowds." But these days, their mission has taken
on added urgency because the urban cow has encountered a vicious new
enemy: the plastic garbage bag. With little grass to graze on in the
paved cityscape, cows scavenge through trash that is increasingly packed
into polyethylene. New Delhi's animal rights groups have recently begun
campaigns against the lethal packaging. Table scraps may be fine fodder,
they say, but the plastic wrapping is not digestible in any of the cows'
four famous stomachs. They want use of the garbage bags banned, though
as yet this appears unlikely. In modern India, the utility of the
garbage bag may be a force beyond even the spirituality of the cow.
"Inside the cows we find glass, iron, wire, electrical cords, shoes,
shirts and razor blades, but the real killer is the plastic," said Dr.
Vijay Chaudry, a veterinarian who runs a refuge where the cow catchers
deliver the caught cows. "We lose two or three cows a day, and when we
cut them open it is terrible what we find. For an animal so sacred, they
die a bad death." Cows are as common to big-city India as bright lights
are to Broadway, and revered though they may be, most live the life of
vagrants. They are either unwanted animals, turned out because they are
old and dry, or milk producers belonging to city dwellers who do not
feed them. "Cows that are still productive belong to people who think,
'Why should I feed this cow, when the cow can feed itself?'" said
Sharma, 36, a bureaucrat whose official title is milk tax inspector.
"These owners sometimes chase us when we take their cows. "I tell you,
there are many difficulties to this work. Old cows are tired and sick,
and these are easy to catch. Young, healthy cows, well, this is
something else. The cow is quick. The cow is intelligent. The cow has
learned to recognize our truck." Hindus venerate the cow as a symbol of
motherhood and a giver of life. It is certainly the mainstay of rural
India, providing milk and pulling carts. Dried cow dung is the
slow-burning cooking fuel favored by most village households. It also
makes a good hard floor. Cow slaughter -- sometimes a volatile,
violence-provoking issue here -- is banned in most of India's 27 states,
though there is no shortage of juicy steaks for those who can afford
them. Beef is sold on the black market, and butchers casually deliver
their prime cuts door to door. This not-so-surreptitious killing is
rarely discussed in a nation where the hallowed cow seems quaintly
familiar on boulevards that are otherwise overpopulated with
smoke-belching rattletraps. For the cow catcher, the animal's high
approval rating is a problem. As a crowd gathers, more people are always
rooting for the cow than the catcher. There is little use in talking to
spectators about plastic bags and clogged digestive tracts. "Why don't
you quit torturing the poor animal!" a man called out as Sharma's crew
took on its toughest challenge of the day, a horned, formidable-looking
white brute. Stealth is the cow catcher's principal tactic. Once a rope
has been slipped onto the animal's head, the techniques of the rodeo
cowboy usually work -- the headlock, the twisting, the tugging. "If you
grab the ears and put your hand in its mouth, the cow won't run," said
Aji Ram, at 60 the most veteran of the crew. "Then someone's got to hold
on to the tail." When the catchers sneaked up on her, the big white cow
had been enjoying the garbage beside a vegetable stand along busy Okhala
Road. Another, more alert animal had just bolted away, recognizing the
green rust bucket that serves as the cow catcher's truck. She then
agilely ran up a steep slope, eventually taking sanctuary in a taxi
stand. The white cow, however, had carelessly allowed herself to be
roped and there was little else for her do but use Gandhian tactics of
civil disobedience. Whenever the catchers shoved her near the ramp of
their truck, the beast went limp. If they wanted her so badly, they
would have to carry her. For 45 minutes, the catchers used all their
wiles. When these failed, they used their poles, slipping the wooden
prods under the animal and hitting her belly. At the same time, Aji Ram
pulled the tail. Suresh Chand pushed the flank. Radha Krishna slapped
the butt. Sharma himself, dressed in a well-pressed blue shirt, never
touched the cow, but he did survey the crowd, which was ready to declare
the animal the winner. "I don't think we catch this cow," Sharma said,
calling off the struggle. Anyway, they already had eight cows in their
truck, a good enough bounty for three hours' work. The animals were then
driven to the city's outskirts and set free in a gosadan, a sort of a
shelter for homeless cows. There, they could chew their cuds in relative
tranquillity, and while their diet may neither be as varied or as tasty
as human garbage, it would again be plastic-free.

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