Sunday 19th Apr, 2026
T HE COW WHICH DOES NOT EAT THE NEIGHBOURS GRASS
Abdul Hameed Dar
Dy.Gnl. Manager (Rtd.) jktdc
On the onset it sounds strange but i swear by my conscious – that a chunk or a piece of Land around my Cottage- which had a Green Grass cover was not taken care off for more than three months this summer and was left unattended resulting into a very thick Grass Cover. Thus our Lawn mower could not make a dent on it. So under compulsion i engaged one Civil escort namely Lallu Prasad of Bihar to clear the area of the surplus grass which took him three days to achieve the desired results .End result of all this hard work was big heaps of mowed grass. In our colony of concrete jungle there is no separate and sufficient dumping place as such i out of good will called on my neighbour and requested him to take the readymade mowed grass for the cows he is rearing i also requested him to bring along a hand wheel for the said purpose .I thought that the cow would get something refreshing for mastication.
But to my disbelief the neighbour in question did not turn up even after reminding him for three consecutive days making my family members quiet intolerant and in turn putting me into an embarrassing situation . So in order to hush up the issue, I, secretly pressed into the services of another بابو بہاری (Behari Babu) who like migratory birds come in the valley in March and leave in the Autumn season after making a good money as our own State labourers mostly have stopped doing physical work. The said labourer just dumped the mowed grass outside the colony and i had a sigh of relief. Thus it was not the cow- but the master of my neighbour’s cow who did not allow his cow to eat the neighbour’s grass. Very strange! But this reminded me of my childhood days when we used to rear a cow even at a congested place like Amira Kadal ,Lal Chowk. She was just given simply lot of attention and care and every evening on summer days i was made to carry the fresh from DAL LAKE (گاسہ ڈل ) The grass which used to grow in the Dal lake was brought by the Dwellers living inside the Dal lake to different Ghats in their boats for marketing to make some earning out it .I used to carry it back home from Gow Kadal Ghat either on my Bicycle or mostly on my back along with the feed and fodder for the cow.
A t the time of Milking of the Cow , i used to accompany my mother inside the cowshed. The late mother used to start the process with a Bismillah and instantly used to give few bashes of water to clean the (Veyee) milking area. Afterwards the calf of the cow used to have his feed followed by the second rinse of the milking area. I used to hold the calf (Vooch) in front of the cow that used to lick the calf all over the body with her tongue probably a motherly treatment. I would occasionally put my head before the cow’s mouth and she would lick my head also with her tongue with same affection levels. May we compare the level of attention of the Cow (Animal) in reference to my Neighbour’s response (Human).
The second beautiful reference which is coming to my mind is about the delivery time of the cow. My mother used to ensure that at least the neighbours’ in our immediate vicinity would get a glass full of milk and the neighbours’ in turn as a token of acknowledgement would bring vegetable/ fruit left over and place it before our cow.
In present day’s colonies big or small, posh or jadal , forward or backward- some of us just suspect each other , are always tense, are secretive or biased ; with frowned faces devoid of smiles / glitter on faces as we always live in make believe world with defensive. “YUOS-NE-YAS- ZANE-SOUE- TAS- KEYAH- MANI” meaning that a person who does not know or is not acquainted with the person he interacts is in no mood to acknowledge the accomplishments of that person .Equally true of our modern colonies it is “Gosaen Tomel” i.e. mixture of all sorts, as people in such colonies belong to different social strata and backgrounds for the reason we look so different in temperaments ,outlook and attitudes .There seems sufficient TRUST DEFECIT existing in such colonies which is against our culture, brotherhood and community spirit.
Need of the hour is to heal these shackles, unlock the closed minds; Talk, laugh, share, care, cry and shout together to make life meaningful and purposive. As the life is short ,we must make it lively and vibrant with your positive thinking reflecting on our radiant faces . If we will not do it now, we shall be depriving our children of future generations of their basic traits of honorable living of love, honor and mutual respect. In absence of all these basic traits of life it would be a life of confinement or prison and isolation devoid of smiles and laughs. Our Great saint Sheikh Noor Din Noorani has said:”آو کیا دنیاہس ژہ گاو مالہ نہ یس” meaning that a person who does not rear a cow – what for he has come to live in this world. So please open your mind sets and spread love , joy and happiness with your neighbors and rear a cow to have neighbor’s mowed grass just for a change .
In short this write up is a balancing act between our past time social values and the present day lifestyle/ trends or a debate on Animal v/s Human Behavior under the pretext of grass v/s colony buzz in disguise.