Did you know that some school history books mention a festival called Pola that is held annually in villages to worship cows? Actually history books are the right place for the mention of this festival. The reason for this is that both villages and cows are nearing extinction. Villages are fast becoming towns day by day. As for cows, if you look at the way they are being treated today you will soon realize why they will soon be eliminated.

In countries like America, they use special formulas to feed cows, especially newborn calves. Here in India too, we use an innovative never-heard-before formula for feeding cows. A mound of garbage with at least one part made of plastic bags and two parts of rotten and stale food makes the special "formula food." Cows these days look so anemic and emaciated that I am sure if they were converted to women and sent off to Paris they would bag the most lucrative modeling contracts there. Maybe we could teach France a thing or two about Haute Cowture. While the women there force themselves to starve to maintain their "thin" looks, cattle in India starve because of the excruciating conditions they live in. Just like their Parisian counterparts, they seem to have "slim" chances of survival.

Where once cattle were worshipped and revered as holy animals in our country, today they are beaten and hassled. Cattle-driven carts with huge loads are not an uncommon sight for us. A large number of these poor beasts look as though they would collapse any moment under the load.

A while back there was a great hue and cry about the foot and mouth disease. People were worried not because the cows were sick but because the sickness was spreading to humans too. Though the disease originated in some obscure part of Britain, people abroad became paranoid and the fear soon spread to India. It was a sad fact that all through the media hype very little attention was given to the suffering cows themselves.