Then, to put an end to the total perplexity that had gripped my wife, I explained that I wanted to pick my own brains on everything about cows to write a piece on the new Rajasthan government's desire to honour its election promise and create a ministry for cows, probably the world's first.
Unable to find the piece and trying to ignore a totally uncalled-for comment by the wife that post-retirement senility was getting to me right and proper, I began to grope in near-total mental darkness on what could be the defining elements in a modern state government cow ministry.
Obviously, it would have the usual complement of principal secretary, secretary and joint secretary. There would also have to be an officer on special duty who would have his task cut out - deflecting and responding to the snide barbs emanating from anglicised pseudo-secularists with an exaggerated notion of their sense of humour who thought this was journeying back in time to cater to the interests of one set of backward-looking believers.
But the real challenge was to figure out how the work would be apportioned to the different departments and sections in the ministry on a scientific and rational basis. The first decision was to get the name right. Not "cow protection"; that could denote threat of extinction. So much better to call it the ministry for "cow development" - just as there could be a set-up for industrial development trying hard to save industry at a time when the index of industrial production is plunging.
While the major work of improving the genetic strain of Indian cows and developing a good fodder industry could be entrusted to the main workforce in the ministry, there was also a need to promote the many uses that came out of a cow but had not received formal scientific acknowledgement. This was unsurprising, since modern science was controlled by the West. There really needed to be a separate department or section to codify and propagate the many therapeutic and antiseptic properties of cow urine and dung. All remembered the battle that Morarji Desai waged for urine therapy. The only problem would be to find a bright officer who would not mind being designated "joint secretary, urine and dung".
But no sooner had I got excited about figuring out the full ramifications of the ministry than came the unbelievable news that the Rajasthan government was having second thoughts about setting up a full-fledged ministry and was considering having a department. This was really disappointing. What could have happened? It couldn't be that the Rajasthan government was paying heed to westernised upper-class people who considered anybody rooting for cows to be a gawaar (country bumpkin).
The challenge had to come from within. Could it be that there was an impasse? A section, which had an interest in bulls, was rooting for them and demanding that measures to protect the interests of bulls in the proposed ministry be spelt out right away? Otherwise, it would amount to gender discrimination! What if someone like Maneka Gandhi, who had campaigned long for animal rights, stood up for the discriminated? Since you cannot have cows without bulls, the latter deserved equal protection. But the more I thought about it, the idea of a bull lobby hard at work lacked credibility.
Then it hit me. It had to be the buffalo lobby! And it was really strong in northern India, where the particular caste that tended to buffaloes as well as cows was in the ascendant. And they proudly traced their ancestry to none other than the cowherd Lord Krishna. It is the buffalo's rich milk that was the money spinner and those who depended on the bovine economy would be loath to miss out on the incentives spent on promoting the cow. I'm sure it could be sorted out. You could have a department each for the cow and the buffalo under an overall bovine ministry. A downgrade to a mere department even before birth was to be avoided at all costs.
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