I have written numerous articles about India on this blog and have tried to describe my thoughts and feelings in this particular post here. (click to go to that post)
Many images and memories are still vivid in my mind and still amazing. E.g. the cows….
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| Lovely bandana;-). |
What about those cows?, you may ask…
Well, we all know that India is the land of the Holy Cow.
A bit of background first:
the special position of cows in India has to do with Hinduism. The cows are actually not so much Sacred, as they are Taboo. Taboo to slaughter and eat. Especially milk-bearing cows should not be killed.
It is believed that this attitude and ideas came from centuries ago, both from spiritual motives (a vegetarian lifestyle would be healthier and purer) and from practical motives (cows are expensive to slaughter and the cow provides many useful products, like milk, dung as fuel, etc.).
This does not mean that cows in India lead such glorious or good lifes. They are left in peace, but that’s basically it. So one will see cows roaming the city centers, scavenging through garbage, looking for anything edible. Many are quite emaciated.
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| Dogs, goats and even people join in in the search in the garbage… |
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| The women sit on the rubble of some roadworks selling their veggies, while the cow ‘grazes’ between the rocks… |
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| Not an uplifting image… |
Ofcourse some DO belong to families in order to provide them with milk, butter and fuel.
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| The front cow has a rope, so I guess it belongs to someone. |
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| Small city farm. I was so surprised to find this ‘farm’ here. It is just around the corner from all the IT offices in Bangalore. |
And then there are bulls, oxen and buffaloes, that are used for farming, working, transportation (pulling bull carts). They are even worse of, being whipped and pulling heavy cargo.
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| The ropes through their noses must be very painful:-( |
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| Again these ropes through their noses. |
The fact that lots of cows are sort of strays, creates weird and dangerous situations in traffic.
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| They found a siesta spot against the mid section of the road. And then that stretched-out leg. With all the heavy traffic passing by. I already imagined his leg being run over. Scary! |
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| Going everywhere…. |
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| So you sit in a taxi and this herd of water buffaloes passes you by…… |
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| ….if you would open the window, you could grab their horns. The adults are huge! |
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| Believe me, this one is quite enormous, when you are on foot and it comes towards you. |
During the day that is bad enough as it is, but we drove through the countryside of Rajasthan one night. Everything was pitch-black and cows were crossing the road everywhere. Scary! It makes you wonder how many road accidents happen every day due to the loose cows.
Here are some more images of my cow/bull/ox/buffalo encounters:
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| Chillin’…. |
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| Love that lavender color! |
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| Once, cars were referred to as Holy Cows;-) |
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| Calf drinks at mother cow, while tourist strolls by. |
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| Garding the marble? |
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| Siesta. |
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| Beautiful head and eyelashes. |
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| Poor skinny bull! |
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| Narrow streets, big cows! |
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| Kerala countryside, backwaters. |
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| Post-swim-stretching;-) |
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| Covered in yellow powder. How? Why? |
Have you been in India? How were your experiences with (sacred) cows? What or where was your strangest encounter?
Amazing captures! These cows being sacred do not have happy lives however, at least many of them. In Hinduism it is believed that to have a cow die in your house will bring bad luck. So when a cow gets old many just get rid of it “kicking” it out in the street. There are cows on the loose here in Nepal too but not that much as in India.
Aha, I did not know that, Olga. Well, that explains a lot. Poor animals!
I have to say that I found some of these photos very disturbing. Especially the ones where it looks like the animals are starving to death.
My husband has been to India and tried to explain just how it was but looking at your photos gives me a much better idea. In all honesty India has never been a country I’ve wanted to visit. This just reinforces that.
The photo with the orange door is spectacular. As well as the one below it with the motorbike.
bisous
Suzanne
I get where you’re coming from, Suzanne. There are lots of beautiful places and wonderful people in India too, of course. You just wished that there was not this misery, poverty and cruelty (also to people) around.
Yes, a true country of contrasts.