The setting sun shone mildly on Manni Devi's head as she trudged home wearily after a long day's work. As she neared her little mud hut, her cow's lowing stopped her short. She went to the shady neem where they tethered old Rupa, and called out to her in that special tone that the cow liked. The animal came up to her, and Manni saw that her big brown eyes were filled with tears. "What happened that upset my Rupa so?" she crooned, caressing the cow. Rupa rumbled softly, tears rolling piteously down her face. Manni understood immediately what the dumb animal was trying to tell her. She quickly ran to her house and got some flour and salt, which she mixed with water in the big stone bowl from which her cow ate. Then she watched as Rupa devoured her meal, grunting with enjoyment. After the cow had eaten, Manni picked up a stout stick and shouted, "Munna! Munna! Come home and eat!" Her teenaged son, who wouldn't have responded if she had called him to do any work, came running at the prospect of getting food. Instead she went at him with the stick: "You good-for-nothing! Again you forgot to feed Rupa in the afternoon!" "I did," he lied, "of course I fed her." But Manni knew better: "Rupa has told me you didn't, and cows don't lie. They are God's animals." Manni's relationship with her cow, though special, is not unique: in the villages here, a cow is often the most cherished possession a person has. Looking after a cow is almost half a day's work: it has to be bathed in the morning, fed two to three times a day, and, of course, milked once or twice. Although many poor people cannot afford to feed their cattle more than 250 grams of flour and a handful of salt everyday, the cow gives back much more to them. Cow's milk and it's derivatives: ghee, buttemilk and curd, are prized over other foods, such as vegetables and cereals, by villagers. Cow dung is the principal source of fuel in most UP villages even today. And of course, religious merit accrues to people who tend cows. However, it seems clear that the villagers' love for these bovines is not just out of a sense of religious duty or the cost benefits of owning cattle. Even when the cows become old and their milk dries up, their owners often continue to look after them with the same affection. "I bought Rupa when she was a mere calf, for Rs 100. Now, almost eight years have passed and she does not give as much milk as other cows, let alone buffalos. But I won't sell her for all the riches in the world," says Manni Devi, recalling the hard times they faced when her husband died and the family had no source of income. Her children would have starved if it hadn't been for the plentiful supply of milk that Rupa provided. "One way of showing my gratitude is to look after her even now that she has become old," she said.
"Whenever I've returned home after a few days, my cow keeps crying. She stops only after I caress her face and give her some salt (her favourite) to lick," said Lalji, Manni's neighbour. He swears by cow urine as a cure for sore throats, and showed me how he has used cow dung to plaster the walls of his hut. Lalji's eyes still get wet when he talks about Bhuri, his cow, who died last winter. "We took her body to the holy Ganges, and were grieved as we would have at the death of any other family member," he told me.
Manni feels the same way about Rupa: "the same Munna who keeps forgetting to feed her, has actually sucked milk straight from her teats as a child. Yet Rupa has always been gentle with him."