The Cow

Kartarpur

Sage poet Nanak in Kartarpur is resting under the tree
Buffaloes grazing in the green fields and Nanak singing a song of ecstasy.

“Mann hali kirsani karni saram pani tan khet,
naam beej santokh suhaga rakh garibi ves”

I look at Sidharth’s painting and I am there.

It is Swedish summer, early August. A deep greenness is embracing us and the evening sun is warm. We sit in the garden close to the pasture land and have our dinner. Suddenly, the cows are there. They are many, maybe twenty. They gather close to the fence and look at us. They look and look. Only sometimes they bend down to eat grass.

Their looks are honest. They do not hide what they want from us. The apples are not ripe yet, but they want them anyway. So we get up, start to pick and then we throw unripe apples to them. We continue our dinner, chewing simultaneously with the cows. Their breath is heavy, they slurp and snort and pant. We listen, we do not need to talk. Their presence is calm, yet overwhelming. We become one ear, filled with the flow of cow sound.

These cows. All summer they walk as they like, rest as they like, scratch their backs against the maple trees as they like, chew as much grass as they like, chase away with their tails as many flies as they like. They are not locked up in big meat factories without a glimpse of a meadow, not an inch of the sky. The calves jump and skip and leap. They are alive.

When autumn comes time has run out for most of them, as for their friends in the factories. They do not come back next summer.

Paradise is a place full of cows and green apples. They are allowed to eat them, they eat and slurp loudly.

Ms. Birgitta Wallin