Holy Cow (13 page)
Authors: David Duchovny
“A pava-what?” I asked.
“The Indian peahen, Good Lawdy, Miss Clawdy. National bird of India. As I live and breathe. Top drawer, A-list all the way. But no female on the planet can resist a private jet. Stand back and watch a master at work.” He ambled over to this beautiful, vain bird and opened with “By any chance, are your parents aliens? ’Cause, damn, girl, you are out of this world.” The peahen squawked, turned tail, and strutted away. Shot down. Poor Tom, he could fly now, but he was still a turkey with the ladies. To save face, he paused a moment, and then yelled after the peahen, “I’ll call ya!” He came back to Shalom and me. “Got her digits,” he lied. “Air Turkey in full effect.”
As we approached Dharavi, one of Mumbai’s largest slums and one of the most densely populated areas in the entire world, I started to second-guess myself—what if it had all been a lie? Everywhere I looked, people seemed worse off than animals, and animals were being treated even worse than in the States. Even the dogs. Dogs! Man’s best friend? They all looked skinny and mangy and beaten down, and no one was petting any of them. What if cows were not revered in this country? What if they used and abused and ate us like they did in the States? Had I been a fool? Was I going to die thousands of miles away from my home and my bones never reunited with the bones of my ancestors?
My first clue came when we tried to cross a busy intersection. I stood waiting for the light, terrified of the cars and bikes, railway buses, auto rickshaws, and black-and-yellow metered taxis that careened by even more crazily than they do in the States. I put one hesitant hoof onto the road and, all of a sudden, the oncoming traffic halted like I had a Box God wand in my hand and had just put the world on pause. I looked to see if the light had changed, but it hadn’t. I looked over into the eyes of the drivers inside their cars, and they were looking back at me with a mixture of love, reverence, and patience. I told Shalom and Tom to jump on my back. (I was back to walking on all fours all the time again—I could be a cow!) I began to cross the street. Not one car honked impatiently, and they waited for me to be safely on the other side before starting up again. A dirty man in rags came and put his forehead on my forehead and stroked me, murmured lovingly, and then went on his way. This would happen hundreds of times in the next few days. It was true. It was all true. I was a queen.
“It was true. It was all true. I was a queen.”
I could go wherever I pleased, and no one tried to touch the pig or the turkey while they were on my back. I was given candies to eat, and sugar, which I’d never had—they were delicious. In soothing tones, the Mumbaikar spoke Hindi and Bambaiya to me. I piggybacked Shalom and Tom as we sightsaw. We saw temples and skyscrapers; we saw the beautiful Victoria Terminus, renamed but still a symbol of colonial oppression. “This is it!” Shalom cooed. “We hit the jackpot. This country is cowcentric. We are golden gods!” A little girl came up to me with finger paints and put bright colors on my face, made me up to look like the most beautiful Bollywood movie star. I had to check to see if my heart was still beating because I was sure I had died and gone to heaven.
We gorged on sweets made of rice and milk and were given the softest places to lie down. Even the poorest folk, who had nothing, gave us some of that nothing. I had never seen such poverty, and all in a city with the sixth-highest concentration of billionaires in the world. And yet what the poor had, they shared with me even if they didn’t share with one another. Humans can be very generous, though not often enough with other humans.
I had nowhere to go, nowhere I had to be. I just wandered. I didn’t need to find a home, because anywhere I stopped or lay down was my home. This was truly and literally my country. When I looked into the beautiful big brown eyes of the people, I felt I could see my own reflection.
I spent months this way, or was it years? It was like that Lotus Eaters episode in Homer. The three of us—eating, sleeping, eating, sleeping, being worshipped. Shalom had put on like twenty pounds in the time we’d been there. Tom finally looked like a turkey the day before Thanksgiving, plump and juicy. Being worshipped felt good, a lot like feeling loved, though not quite, not quite. It was like a wonderful-tasting, rich meal that left you a little dazed and stupid afterward. Nonetheless, Shalom took to saying, “What a mitzvah. I’m happier than a pig in shit.”
We took to hanging around a cool spot by the Arabian Sea called Chowpatty Beach. I was drawn to it ’cause it sounded like “Cow Patty Beach” to me. It had wide sand vistas and a carnival feeling at night. Shalom achieved a deep brown, Bain de Soleil tan, and said, “Miami Mi-shmami. Who needs Flah-rida?”
Tom learned how to swim. Nowadays, he could fly, he could swim. He said, “I could very well be a duck. I might be a duck trapped in a turkey’s body.” We were sleepy and stupid with sloth.
One sunny afternoon, identical to all the other sunny afternoons, I spotted a herd of loitering Indian cows. My people. I hadn’t realized how lonely I was for bovine company, their feel, their smell, the sound of their lowing. No offense to the pigs and the birds, but there are down-home-feeling things you get from your own kind that are necessary from time to time. I broke into a trot to say hello. “Hello, cows, cows, hello. Greetings and salutations. So good to—”
“Who are you?”
Stopped me in my tracks. Spoken in a tone I had never heard from a cow before, haughty, disdainful, cold—almost human. “My name is Elsie Q,” I said. “I’ve come from America.” None of the cows made any move to greet me or sniff me. “These are my friends Shalom and Tom…”
“We are sacred cows,” the matriarch said. “We are the goddess Prithvi, we are Kamadhenu, we are the source of all that is plentiful, all that is good. The milk for the child, the dung for the crops.”
“Right on,” said Shalom. “Good to meet you, Katmandu. Katnis. Can I call you ‘Kat’?”
“Kamadhenu.”
“Eluhenu.”
“Ka-ma-dhe-nu.”
“You say Kamadhenu, I say Eluhenu. Potayto, potahto, kamadhenu, eluhenu—let’s call the whole thing off.”
Crickets.
“Sheesh, tough crowd.”
I noticed that some of the cows were giggling nonsensically and focused on seemingly mundane things, like a clod of dirt, or their own hoof, or just staring into space and smiling weirdly. They seemed so friendly that Shalom and Tom hopped off my back and went over to hang out with them. I lost track of my fellow travelers for a few moments. That was a mistake.
“What’s so funny?” I asked that group.
“We are the silly cows,” one said, in a lilting accent you usually associate with surfers in California. I guess laid-back beach culture is the same the world over. “What’s up, feathery guy? What’s up, fat pink dude?” A couple of the silly cows became fascinated with Tom’s wattle, that quivery piece of flesh near his neck. Tom was always a little self-conscious of it, thought it made him look fat. “Check out the crazy skin under this dude’s chin—flappa dappa dappa.”
The silly cows started to pull and stroke Tom’s wattle. “Dude, it feels like bumpy rubber. It’s freakin’ me out.” One of those cows offered both Tom and Shalom something to eat that I couldn’t see. It was small and brown, like a lost button. They both gobbled it down. I turned my attention back to the matriarch. She met my eyes impassively.
“Why do you keep company with pigs and birds?” she asked.
“Because they’re my friends.”
“Indian cows only have other Indian cows for friends. We are goddesses. Only we cows are sacred, we cannot stoop to the level of associating with mere animals such as these. You threaten the whole hierarchy with your behavior.”
She was sipping a brightly colored sugary substance through a straw, a small wooden umbrella hanging off the side of her glass, and having her hooves buffed by a little girl. She and some of the other cows had bright metal jewelry around their necks and lovely colored silk sashes tied to them. They looked stunning, like movie stars. But even though the matriarch was my sista from anotha mista, I had taken an instant dislike to her.
“I’m not a goddess, I’m just an animal, we’re all animals, just like the pigs, the birds, just like the humans, for that matter.”
“Heresy!” the matriarch said. There was a lot of consternation and lowing from the rest of the assembled cows. “You endanger our position. If you show the humans that we’re animals, they will begin to treat us like animals, and eat us like animals, the way they do in your godforsaken country.”
“But it’s not right,” I said. “It’s not right and it’s not fair.” I noticed that Shalom had a big poop-eating grin on his face and was staring at his nail bed like it was the most fascinating thing in the world. Meanwhile, Tom was flapping around in a circle like a break dancer, showing off how his wattle wattled for the silly cows.
“Fair?” the matriarch said. “Look around you, where do you see ‘fair’? Whoever promised you ‘fair’? Your mommy? You talk like a half calf. Grow up, cow. You’re a goddess, act like one or be shunned by us other goddesses.”
“I’m not a goddess,” I said.
“Yes, she is, she’s a goddess,” said Shalom. “She’s just kidding, she’s a kidder, she kids, she is so goddess you can’t even believe it.” And then, for no apparent reason, he broke out in a soaring rendition of Whitney Houston’s “The Greatest Love of All.” He had a pretty good voice for a pig, but still weird.
“What’s up with you?” I asked him.
“These mushrooms that grow on cow poop—‘silly sky’—they are excellent tasty,” Tom announced, then broke into the Patrick Hernandez disco classic “Born to Be Alive.” He did not have a good voice, even for a turkey. But his rhythm was excellent, pounding out that ’70s beat with his drumsticks. The silly cows were mesmerized by how his wattle vibrated while he sang.
“Psilocybin mushrooms,” the matriarch said, “open the mind, and they grow only in our dung, another reason we are sacred to humans. We nourish their bodies with our milk, our dung is used as fertilizer for their crops, and as fuel, and we even expand their consciousness with our mushrooms.”
(My editor called and says she’s on the fence about the drug stuff. “Parents will love it ’cause it’ll make them feel young and hip,” she said, “but then they’ll get uptight thinking their kids are being gatewayed into the world of drugs by talking animals.”
“Much the way my friend Joe the camel was a cute face, reminiscent of childhood cartoons, recruited to hawk the drug called tobacco?” I asked.
“Oh, Elsie.” She sighed. “I guess a big animal needs a big soapbox; you know I love you, all I ask is that you always ask yourself—is it tent pole? Sorry, I got another call here, from a horse, grandson of Mr. Ed by way of Ruffian, who’s written a tell-all tale of excess and redemption. Later, babe.”)
“I’m seeing colors,” Shalom said, “colors that have no name.”
“We are all the same, dudes,” Tom crowed. “Somebody touch me. No, don’t touch me. Lighten up, mama cow, let’s talk turkey, owwww stand back, gonna kiss myself!”
“Blellow. Blellow. Blellow,” Shalom slurred. “Blue and yellow together, that’s a color we need a name for. Coining it.”
“I’m flying again.” Tom crooned like Peter Pan. “You got me straight trippin’, boo.”
“Tell the porker and the fowl to shut up, as I will not address them directly.”
“I will not tell my friends to shut up.”
“Are you Hindu?” she asked.
“No.”
“Muslim? Zoroastrian? Jain? Buddhist? Jewish? Sikh? Parsi? Christian? Other?”
“They’re all the same to me.”
“Interesting story,” said Shalom. “I used to be Jewish, but now I’d have to say I’m Hindu. You guys are Hindu, right? I just converted. I am Hindu as hell, Bapu…” He snatched the yarmulke off his head and tossed it aside like a Frisbee and tried to get one of the cows to lend him a bindi for his forehead. He started chanting, “Can a, can a, can a brother get a bindi? Can a Hindi get a bindi!”
“I used to be Turkish,” Tom said, “but now I am … sooooo high…”
The matriarch shook her head dismissively. “Then it falls to you, American cow. Are you a goddess or an animal? Think before you speak, for we will shun you from our midst if you answer to our disliking.”
“I’m a cow,” I said.
“You didn’t answer my question,” the matriarch kept on. “Choose. I asked you if you were a goddess or an animal.”
“I am both,” I said.
“Choose one,” she said. “Choose one or choose nothing.”
“I am an animal,” I said. “No more, no less.”
“You dudes are really harshing my high with all the neg vibes. Have a shroom,” Tom purred.
“Blellow,” Shalom slurred.
I said again slowly, forcefully, “I. Am. An. Animal.”
It took about twelve hours for Shalom and Tom to descend from the silly sky. But that’s the thing, you can’t just stay high. What goes up must come down. I had spent a long time dreaming of India, it’s true. But I’m not upset that India didn’t turn out the way I had planned, didn’t in the end match up with my dream India. Without my vision of a dream India, I never would have gone anywhere, never would have had any adventures at all. So I guess it’s not so important that dreams come true, it’s just important that you have a dream to begin with, to get you to take your first steps.