Bovinity is not for me

February 2nd 2025

The other day, Seenappa and I, on examining the lime plants at Random Rubble, the farm, carefully concluded that they had been attacked by stem borers.  Now, as you know, I keep myself abreast of the latest developments in scientific thinking, so I immediately thought of cow urine.  

The head of IIT Madras, in a deeply emotional moment of bovine divinity (which phrase shall henceforth be termed bovinity and is my unique contribution to the language),  has endorsed cow urine as a panacea for a variety of diseases (including dullness between the ears because of a pre-existing vacuum).  Since he has not specifically mentioned stem borer, I asked ChatGPT for help and, accordingly, Seenappa prepared a solution of cow urine + garlic + chilli with a teaspoon of asafoetida, a pinch of which will otherwise repel a blue whale.

I have some advice for you if you have never experienced a solution of cow urine + garlic + chilli + asafoetida.  

Don’t.

We applied this to each plant with a brush (the IIT Director, in keeping with his astute scientific temper and bovinity, would have emphatically disagreed and asked us to apply this with a cow’s tail, but Seenappa’s cows were deeply and violently reluctant to lend their tails and one needs inter-departmental cooperation in these matters).  Besides, you could end up dead, and, as they say in the Wild Wild West, dead men tell no tails.  

About three minutes and twenty two seconds into the application, Seenappa, who was holding up the bucket - had he been in Citibank, he would have been Executive Vice President (Liquidity Management) - began to smell strongly of cow urine + garlic + chilli+asafoetida and I was forced, abandoning table manners and societal decorum, to ask him what he had had for dinner.  

Now, if you have read my earlier posts about this stellar representative of Sapiens ruralicus, you know that when his IQ is compared to that of Winnie the Pooh, Winnie turns out to be an intellectual giant on the same infrared wavelength as Carl Jung.  He stared at me blankly (Seenappa, not Winnie the Pooh) and remarked enquiringly that I was smelling of 

1. Garlic

2. Cow urine

3. asafoetida

4. Chilli

and appeared surprised by the coincidence except for the order of odour (which is such a cool phrase and hence to be bookmarked for future use), all of which, of course, got me raving mad, but there was nothing to be done.  

As we progressed, the lime fruits on the plants, which are world famous in Bangalore for their citrusy fragrance, began to smell of bloody cow urine + garlic + chilli + asafoetida, birds abandoned their chicks, the yellow-billed babblers announced their opposition with screechy alarm calls and fled and I saw a mongoose shoot past with a clearly disgusted look in our direction.  

When we were done, I hung up my gloves after rinsing them and dropped my clothes in white vinegar, had two baths with lux and Dove, lit seven incense sticks in a never-before seen display of devotion and left a bottle of eucalyptus oil open.  

The next morning, I woke up to a beautiful day smelling of

1. Cow urine

2. Garlic

3. Chilli

4. Asafoetida