YASHODA, Nepal Revisited

Yashoda

Time in Nepal used to be an obligatory period of drudgery and dislike. I could stay in that state of mind, and react to all the frenzy of the tourist scene, the rudeness of the locals who have seen too many rude tourists passing through, or I could try to escape this mindset and replace it with one of productivity and ease.

I ended up staying in some lovely Tibetan Buddhist monasteries, and an Anni gompa (nunnery) with great joy and satisfaction. The Anni gompa was close enough to Kathmandu that I could make visits to the city as often as I liked, and make good use of my time there.

Kathmandu is full of bedbugs and mange! The dogs suffer terribly from the mange, while the tourists silently accept the bedbugs. It is painful to watch pained, pink skinned hairless dogs scratching and scratching. With all this scratching, they often create secondary infections by tearing the skin, and bacteria quickly settles in. Ivermectin for the mange, and an appropriate antibiotic for the secondary skin infection. With at least two months there, I could easily follow a specific group and have them treated thoroughly. And it was done.

In these travels, I came to have my heart touched by an old sad cow. Old, no longer able to produce milk, she had been turned out, onto the streets to fend for herself. I first noticed her in Durbar square, close to the old hippie scene, Freak street. She caught my eye as she was quite large, clearly old, and seemingly pregnant??? She had a huge swollen belly … but not. I saw her from her left side, she was impossible to miss, and as I walked around her, and saw the right side, I could only gasp. She was skeletal. It was the strangest sight I had seen in a cow; half bloated, and half skeletal.

I called all the animal rescue groups in Kathmandu, there are many, and none wanted to help her. So, daily, I started to feed her, and tried to get a medical opinion as to what was going on here. My concerns were ingestion of too many plastic bags, which the cows cannot pass. Plastic bags that still have a bit of food in them, become part of the daily diet. These street cows eat everything, there is not enough proper food available for them.  Cardboard boxes, licking posters glued onto walls, plastic bags, and the odd bit of rotting vegetables in the swept up garbage is the daily diet for the street cow. It’s all they can find. They are forced to become scavengers for food, and do not do well. Occasionally a kind soul will offer a few scraps of food, but it is not enough to sustain them.

So, what to do? Finally a veterinary doctor came out, and determined it was not ingestion of plastic bags that caused this, but more likely overproduction of milk, causing a collapse of the internal lining of the stomach, or all four stomachs as in the case of cows. So basically, the stomach has nothing to hold it up, and kind of shifts like a giant hernia. What causes this, is very possibly hormone injections which will increase the production of milk to an unhealthy level to the cow, but a financially profitable level for the farmer. Prognosis is not good. He suggested surgery at an exorbitant, foreigners rate, but no place to keep her for recovery, and no guarantee that she would survive the surgery. NOT an option.

I continued daily feedings, and although I was growing to love her, she repeatedly showed me her bit of an anti-social side, with turning her head away, and her “why are you bothering me while I am napping”, glances. I loved her all the more for her independence, her strong character, and her clear displays of like and dislikes.   The locals started to take notice, and started to help in her care and feedings. It was nice, and she seemed to settle in comfortably and she found her favorite spots for resting throughout the day and night.

And one day the local police came up to me…

“What are you doing? We have seen you here daily.”

“I come to feed her.”

“Do you work for an NGO (non-for-profit)”

“No.”

“How long are you here?”

“Two months.”

“Let’s come inside and talk.”

I get more questioning from more than one officer,  with repeated notice that tourists are supposed to be tourists.

“I’m touring the streets and dogs and cows are on the streets… How can I not see them…?”

I leave, thinking, good god, they want to harass me for doing something kind…? And am I about to be deported ... Thailand here I come?

I’m followed by one of the officers, he comes up to me and says lets go in here, the Kumari house, courtyard, and we can talk. Shit, now what, I can’t help but think. Another officer follows him.

“We are simple farmers, we come from the villages, and we also care for this cow.”

“We think what you are doing is wonderful, and we want to help.”


I was in shock. Happy shock, but shock. 

The bottom line was that the superiors, local officials would not let her stay in Durbar Square, and after I would leave, there would not be enough food for her anyway. So she had to be moved, but they would personally help me with her transport if needed, and they would give me time to place her elsewhere.

The search for a new location began in earnest …. It took me to the Hare Krishna Temple close to Budhanilkanta, [Krishna -  cows -  I tried to convince them of their duty to take care of abandoned cows - ],  to a self styled orphanage in a small village run by a French monk I met at a Farmer’s Market, and to any and every grazing space I could find between Kathmandu and her outer rings….! The Hare Krishna’s came close, after much negotiation, with yes, and no, and yes, but … It was just taking too long to get a definitive answer. We left that as a possibility to be explored in my next visit, to be continued later.

Then I found it! The perfect spot appeared to me. Pashupatinath is the largest Hindi temple, complex in Kathmandu. As foreigners, we are allowed to enter only certain areas of the complex, and only we pay the exorbitant entry fee to maintain the holy separatists. [A side note, there is easy open, FREE access from the back side. Watch the school children, they cut through this way everyday, follow them and, you’re in!] Next to Pashupatinath is a tourist bus park, and next to the tourist bus park, is a HUGE, fully enclosed forested park, and I mean huge, and totally unused. The tourists, in their acts of accruing good karma, regularly bring boxes of food, for the monkeys. Why not for the cows as well, I could not help but think.

Next step in the chain of miracles, I finally got a call from an organization, called DREAMS. They did not yet have a space, but were new, with high hopes and big plans. We talked. Why not move Yashoda in the Rani park area, next to Pashupatinath; who would even notice one more cow wandering in the forest. Food was bountiful, and fruits could be easily supplemented by the “holy pilgrims” with their pre-determined acts of kindness on their way to the holy temples. We all agreed it was a good plan.

The move took place, and it was simple. In the early hours we hired a truck and moved her in. She would follow me anywhere at this point, even up a ramp into the truck, and down the ramp into her new home. Yashoda being Yashoda, she had her own mind set, and made a couple of attempts at exploring the outer roads. She escaped from the one and only gate. She would quickly be found, brought back, and in few days settled in to the realization that this was her new home, and it was good. Dreams had daily volunteers coming, spending much of the day there, and added several sick and injured cows and calves. We built several shelter style tents, to protect them from the sun, and rain, and give them a nice bed to sleep in at night. In the day, they were free to wander and graze in this vast open secure, and bountiful forest.

Life being what it is, we cannot stay in one place. The shelter saw its good times and bad. Cows and calves that looked like they were recovering, only to suddenly become very sick and die, to others who continue to thrive. Yashoda had a good six months. She was well fed, free, formed friendships and experienced love. The winter, although they had blankets and shelter, was too hard on her aging body. She did not survive the cold, and left the body in January.

It was difficult for me to hear this. 

I had since been long back in India, and all reports were that Yashodha was doing well. My own health had been challenged at this time, and there would have been nothing I could do anyway as far as going to her and helping her myself.

Spiritually, philosophically, one is reminded over and over of the impermanent state of the universe and our daily lives. Life includes everything, not just the “good” or the “bad”, but all of it. It can be joy, a feeling of bliss, a feeling of success, but it’s also pain and sadness, anger, confusion, and fear. To truly be alive is to admit that we cannot protect ourselves from any of it. So, we can embrace life in its totality, without fear, and make the choice to love, or to numb ourselves from life. Thank you Yashoda, and Dreams, for teaching me this lesson again, and letting me love you, and letting me embrace the sadness of your no longer being here.

                       

                    ... and as Krishna plays his flute, we continue the dance ...