Cowed

Isaac and I don't exactly go in for outdoor adventure. Nonetheless we went up into the hills, to a guest house acclaimed for its trekking opportunities, as a way to escape the heat and the honking of urban India.

Our first morning we followed the dirt road into the woods above the coffee bushes and pepper trees that have been Honey Valley's cash crop since the bee's mite-driven demise. We were drawn to a path described as "flat" and "easy" but which turned out to be "prickly" and "pointless" since it was overgrown with sharp grasses and never led us to the expected waterfall. We're natural quitters, though, so we had no problem turning around early and heading back home for our midday meal.

Something, however, stood in the way of lunch: a mother cow feeding with her calf, companioned by an enormous white bull. They were grazing from the middle of the trail, at a narrow spot hemmed in by bushes and trees. We would have to wait for them to move their meal somewhere less cramped.

Eventually the trio progressed to a section of the trail that seemed wide enough to accommodate us all. We stepped forward cautiously. The bull glanced at us; the she-cow glowered. She kept her protective maternal eyes fixed on us as we edged closer and closer, until we got too close. She tossed her head, snorted, pawed the ground; we ran. We'd grown accustomed to the daily business of street cows, beach cows, front-yard cows, but this was a cow of a different magnitude. We retreated, defeated, prepared to sit still until the sun went down--that, or to call the guest house and request a rescue.

As it turned out, we didn't need to miss lunch or disgrace ourselves. We waited for the soft thud of the cow's wooden bell to grow fainter and fainter,until it disappeared altogether; when there were several hundred feet of safety between us and the cows, we scrambled up the hill and back to start of the trail. Soon we were eating dal and okra curry and laughing over our misadventures.

***

After lunch we started to walk jauntily down the hill from the main house toward our bungalow. Halfway there, our merriment fled: in the middle of the road was another mother and her calf, different from the first pair, but to our overactive imaginations, just as big and horned and potentially lethal. We couldn't go forward.

But we couldn't go back, either, for unlike our previous confrontation, this time we had spectators: Israelis. Israelis who had just yesterday hiked miles through swamps and up mountains, nonchalantly scraped leeches from their skin, laughingly watched a dog rip the head off a chicken. We couldn't let them see us defeated by a cow. We hesitated, and then brought out the cell phone.

For the next few minutes, we purported to look for an Airtel signal up by the main house, hoping our latest bovine adversaries would get bored and go away. They didn't. Our pretence wore thin; we couldn't just keep pacing the same fifty feet looking for a signal. Finally, after whispered strategizing and furtive glances at the Israelis above and the cows below, we decided to act.

We walked steadily towards the mother cow. I looked her right in the eye. I told her: no, don't you snort at me. I raised the index finger of my right hand to emphasize this point. I'm not sure if I charmed the cow into submission, or if she wasn't the deadly beast we imagined her to be, but we walked by her without incident, if not without drama.