How sharing breakfast with a sacred cow gave me the answer to a stubborn question

One of the precious gifts a friend can share is to ask you the perfect question…

… a question that makes you peer inside your own head.

Finishing a coast-to-coast cycle ride across Southern India, I had the chance to spend a few days with a friend, Hemal, who’d moved to live in Pondicherry.

Sitting in the dining hall of his ashram, Hemal and I caught up on each other’s news, laughed, and ate.

Then, gently, he hit me with THE QUESTION…

“On your cycle trip, when was the moment you said to yourself… “NOW I’M IN INDIA!”?

He’d nailed it.

My trip… anyone’s trip… is all about that split second when you let go of your mental baggage, and stare in pure wonder at what’s around you.

It’s that fleeting moment, when you’re wholly, totally in the country you’ve chosen to visit.

So… what was my answer to Hemal’s question?

In my journeys across this amazing country, what’s the stimulus that tells me I’M IN INDIA?

There are two…

One’s the aroma of masala chai.

The other is the sight of a Holy Cow.

Just once… I’ve been hit by both in the same moment.

I’ve written before about why masala chai takes me to a state of bliss. It really does.

My trip… anyone’s trip… is all about that split second when you let go of your mental baggage, and stare in pure wonder at what’s around you.

What is it about Holy Cows?

I think it’s the mystery. I think it’s the mind-boggling fact that a large ruminant – which every other nation on earth imprisons behind fences – is free to wander across India… wherever it wants. For the whole of its life.

I’m a Londoner. I try to imagine an unaccompanied cow moving around my city, and exploring some of my favourite haunts. Maybe crossing from Soho into Chinatown? What would happen?

There’d be bedlam: flashing blue lights, police tape, crowds waving mobile phones.

Here in the town of Kushalnagar, in Karnataka… nada.

As I enter a chai shop on ’s high-street, a large cow with a serious set of horns walks in right behind me. Nobody even looks at it.

The cow is standing inside the café. I need to pinch myself.

For everyone else, the cow seems to belong to the place as naturally as the early morning light.

Why do western and Indian cultures feel so differently about the same animal?

Indians have told me they revere the cow as a symbol of maternal strength and care, and as the only animal whose milk can sustain a human infant.

One more step towards me, and the cow’s breath will disturb the steam on my masala chai.

Looking at this powerful, gentle animal in the café entrance, I glimpse some of that logic.

Calmly, the cow walks deeper into the room and finally stops within about a metre from my table. One more step, and its breath will disturb the steam on my masala chai.

The cow is so close I can smell it.

We look at each other. I sense there is going to be some kind of revelation.

Then the drama takes a totally Indian turn.

Walking past me with a pile of chapatis, the owner of the chai stall approaches the cow and gently feeds it the warm breads – one by one. When the chapatis are gone, he tries to tempt the cow with deep-fried vada.

In India, everything comes back to food.

In my life, have I ever seen a catering professional feed breakfast to a free-roaming cow?

I have not.

The cow stares at me as it chews its chapati.

And that’s when it hits me. In India, the sacred cow is treated… not as pet, as an object or as a thing… but as a BEING.

It isn’t owned, managed or monetised. It simply IS.

In any India town or village, the sacred cow is just another soul, weaving its way through the traffic, colour and people. Like millions of other souls around it.

On that morning, the cow and I simply chose to have breakfast in the same chai stall. For an instant, our journeys overlapped.

In India, the cow isn’t owned, managed or monetised. It simply IS.

Truly, I was IN INDIA.

Thank you, Hemal, for your question.

Leaving the café, the cycle ride continues, and the mystery of India’s relationship with animals… and with food… just gets deeper.

Two days later, visiting the temple town of Subramanya, my guide Jeffin encourages me to take a dawn swim with pilgrims in the sacred Kumaradhara river.

The next morning, at daybreak, even as I’m walking towards the stone steps of the bathing spot, an Indian man approaches me, with a smile. “You must swim,” he says, “the river will cleanse you of all your sins.”

It sounds like a good deal.

For ten or fifteen minutes, I stand sheepishly at the edge of the crowd. Finally, I take off my T shirt and shoes, and head for the water.

I’m about to step into the river, when a hand stops me.

“One moment, sir. Sacred fish.”

He shreds a handful of chapattis and throws them onto the water.

Instantly, the surface boils… as a shoal of huge, hungry tilapia turn the water in front of us into a bubbling jacuzzi. When the fish have eaten their breakfast, and it’s safe to get in, I go for my dip.

If my local church offered a service involving swimming with sacred fish, I would go.

Even in India’s biggest cities, the ritual of feeding free-roaming BEINGS continues.

In Bangalore, eating breakfast in a hotel garden, I was thrilled to see waiters carrying freshly-cooked omelettes onto the lawn and feeding them to wild kites. The chef told me this happens three times a day, every day. It was thrilling to watch a dozen huge birds of prey wheel down in a tumble of wings to get the omelette.

How many other hotels have I seen, anywhere, where wild animals are invited to eat?

And how many times have I seen a wild animal help itself to a tablecloth… from under the nose of one startled diner?

Zero.

The mystery deepens.

I think of Hemal, and I realise that questions are truly a gift.

Questions are absolute and eternal. Answers are subjective, partial and temporary.

Give me questions, any day.

In the culture I grew up in, food is for people.

In India, food connects people, BEINGS… and GODS.

Why should two cultures feel so differently… about something so fundamental?

If you understand… please email me.

This much I know…

food is the wormhole that takes me to the next galaxy in the curryverse

and if I were a cow, a kite or a tilapia… I would head to India for breakfast