Cow dung vs. Hope

My home state is known as God's Own Country. It is lush, green and as close to nature as you possibly wouldn't want it to! I would have loved to be within smelling-distance of nature, but not when it stinks. Cow dung! That’s what we had to dig into everyday in front of our gate.
The view from my window paid glowing tributes to the imagery I have so often mouthed with the utmost ease about a country which God so lovingly moulded, but had to be content with being a state. This view had (and still has) cars, trees, rickshaws, road-salesmen of various hues and wares, fauna of an abundant variety and the odd cow which trudged along with its master everyday between 10am and 10:30am. I had often wondered what kind of a relationship the master shared with the animal, apart from being amazed at the consistency with which it dropped dung right in front of our gate everyday…
Sometime last month there was a gap of 3-4 days before my dad and I realized one day that we didn’t have any dung to clear, partly because of the fact that both of us had much more important things in life than to keep track of dung outside our gate and partly because of the local festivities that resulted in a lot of fanfare in our immediate neighbourhood. It also caught my fancy then on that I did not see the duo walk past our gate in the morning. Even though I ran this observation of mine past my dad, it did not elicit more than the usual flick of his eye-brows. This meant either of the two – ‘why the hell should this bother me’ OR ‘good point’. Considering the fact that it was me who had made the point, I figured it was the latter. Whichever way, I had made up my mind to find out a rationale.
A couple of weeks passed by without me being able to locate the master (I hadn’t made an attempt to locate the cow, as I didn’t think I could differentiate it from two similar looking ones). Not that I had made a great attempt, but I presumed asking the neighbours and watching the gate from my window would be good enough – wasn’t so. It was during one of my sulky trips to the local vegetable market on one of the 'accompany-missions' with my mom that I chanced to see the fellow. He was trying to sell a couple of old rickety chairs in the corner of the market where locals usually sold used house-hold items. I went up to him and caught his attention. He responded with a flick of his eye-brows. It wasn’t similar to that of my dad’s, but was clear from the add-on expression that he didn’t particularly like me eating up precious time of his. I later wondered if my presence with my dad when he reprimanded the fellow for his cow’s droppings had anything to do with it. I enquired with him as to why he and his animal no more walked past our gate everyday morning. The change in his expression from annoyance to that of extreme grief was instantaneous! He broke down. It was as if a large swathe of moisture laden clouds had been waiting for a prick to result in a downpour. It would have been an understatement to say that I was embarrassed, but it was then that I realized why my teachers always ‘commended’ me for my thick-skin. Embarrassment turned to sympathy and later to outright helplessness as the downpour prolonged. It was when he managed to gather himself that he looked directly at me. He then told me how he the cow had been left back when his wife eloped with the local meat seller and how he took care of the then ailing cow. He talked about how he would go to the temple everyday with it to pray for his wife’s return. It was when he told me that the day after the cow died (of some illness two days after it had collapsed) he had received news of his wife’s death, that I had tears rolling down my cheeks…
People standing around us then might have thought it odd for two grown up people to be weeping together, holding hands sitting on two chairs propped up close. But I shed all my inhibitions to join in grief for the first time with somebody I hardly knew.
That was the moment I realized that a nuisance such as cow-dung for someone may have been even more sacred for another and that one day this would bond us in the most bizarre of situations.
My mother saw me and had the good sense to sms me to come home when I was feeling better…