Holy Cow! Happy Sankaranti!

Happy Sankaranti!(Shankranti)

All the cows seemed to have vanished, the streets are quiet, few people around, its the Harvest Holiday, a new year. Much of the festivities take place in the fields or other wise in the homes, drinking Badam Milk (almond and cow milk) and eating Pongal a specialty dish for the holiday made of mushy grains and beans (Kitchari like) in two variations, sweet and spicy.

Efrat volunteers to take me to the cow area. Its not far from where I live, we walk passed the Mandala house where I study, cross double road, named thus since it has a big, black and yellow metal fence dividing it into two equals, and down the street I can already see a cow tied to the fence of a large park. Mysore has parks galore, some small and some large, most with walking paths and benches, coconut trees, lots of plants and a fence to guard it so that no one but humans can go in, part of Mysore’s charm.

We walk towards the cow that is painted yellow in all the spots that are not dark. To our left appears another street with three sheep, a young cow and a calf, all colored yellow. My lips stretch to my ears, a bit surreal, but then again India always is a bit like a movie set, with its own orderly chaos and plenty of dotted beauties, like Bindis on a young girls forehead.

After a while using my camera, I decided that today is a good day to stretch its buttons and twist its focus ring. It was a great feeling of liberty to just walk around without the need to capture, to hold on to the visuals in a permanent form (temporary permanence really), seeing at the present moment with nothing as a barrier between reality and me. Today is a holiday, and as part of the celebration all the cows are painted yellow, turmeric is the color, so it is all natural, healthy, anti-inflammatory and strength giving. It is a great day to share my love to this beautiful animal, in its beautified form of yellow and red painted horns, sometimes with sparkles, sometimes with an Ohm painted on its rear. The camera, when used as part of the celebration, as a means of communication rather that greed, can be an enhancer of reality. It was like that on my trip to Cuba where I only had a 24mm wide angel lens, forcing me to really make contact with the people, to be part of the photo without being in it, a project I started back when I took photos of my parents, creating a triangle of emotion with out me being visually in the frame. I now have a 24-105 zoom, but this still does not allow me to hide and reach far with my zoom to capture an unaware soul, I still am in the midst of life, and with digital even more so. The kids ran up to me and asked me to take photos of them with their cow, or of their little sister, or aunt eating in the window, and then they would want to look at my little screen, to see themselves appear like magic on my magic screen. Their eyes bright with joy, open hearted and wanting to share, their moms inviting us in to eat, “please, you come inside”, when I refused gently, they would run out with a little bag of sweets, like trick or treat, sharing their blessings. Stepping over cow poop, passing by dried cow dong drying on the wall as it will be used for fire later, another cow, being painted goats horns on its forehead with red and gold glitter, little girls dressed in their fanciest cloths, with beautiful dresses of bright colors, sequence and shiny materials offering translucent material covering their arms, lots of colorful shiny bangles singing along with their anklets as they walk. Kids dragged us from one street to the next, “come see my cow”, “this is my house, please come in”, “my uncle”, or any other declarations, wanting to share, feeling pride of connecting with us fortunate foreigners.

In the evening after walking around the lake and seeing the sunset, with the left shin hurting form all the walking, feeling tired, yet hydrated with fresh coconut water, Lauren, Efrat and myself, returned to the cow area, as at night they take the cows to jump over fire. Some of the afternoon kids find us and lead us around. We end up going into one of the homes, drinking some fresh Badam milk, and I mean fresh. The first floor hosts the cows and some sheep, we enter the door, skip the urine, leave our sandals below on the nice tiled steps but not too close to the sheep that want to chew on it, and go up stairs. Downstairs the lighting was tungsten yellow, pale, contrasted with the living room that shone with bright greenish neon lights turning neutral with the light yellow paint on the wall, mostly bare, as was the room apart from a TV and a few plastic chairs. Some huge metal pots containing fresh milk stood in the hallway, one of them being heated (to drink or to clean bacteria?). We are offered seats and some food. We get plates with yummy Pongal. Some hesitation as of for the raw milk from my friends, but I dive right into it, loving the idea of fresh raw milk, a slight after taste of grass.

Load music came from outside, ”dancing, dancing, please you come”, offered the young man that until now was just standing and watching us eat, as if it were a rare view (and maybe it was). We took to the balcony watching the young kids dancing in the street. Cows near by, cow poop on the side, a bright light illuminating so the one video camera in the neighborhood could document the beautiful kids with their marvelous outfits dancing some Bollywood moves. Before long we are down on the street shaking and moving as well, the girls really, I was still finishing my Badam milk, and holding my bit too large of a camera.

We continued along to see some fire hopping. It turns to be some burning hay on the street with a man dragging the cows though it. There sure was fire, yellow cows and even a man going through it, though maybe not so much of any big hopping. The cows went back and forth a few times, there was something really amazing about this, though the cows as holy as they are were not very respected of their own wills.

The cows are holy as long as they provide he precious milk. They are mostly not eaten, though secretly some, like my landlord will admit “it gives great strength to eat a cow, as long as you do not eat pigs, witch will turn you into an evil man.”