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How the lowly donkey became a stupendous creature of equine species

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Arindam Mukherjee
Arindam MukherjeeMar 03, 2017 | 16:09

How the lowly donkey became a stupendous creature of equine species

A teacher in my school once asked students to write an essay on the donkey. Most kids in the classroom churned out monotonic words describing the lowliness of an animal that brayed from the bottommost echelons of obedience and burdensome drudgery.

But there was one young unfettered mind that surprised the rest, to the point that he was pulled up by the teacher and rapped on the head. In his essay, the boy had glorified the donkey instead.

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The title of his essay read — "A stupendous creature of equine species". His essay thereafter went about eulogising a particular donkey with an enormous phallus that dwelled near the school campus. The boy also had a name for the donkey — Mahalingam. More raps on the head.

After being derided by his teacher and ridiculed by fellow classmates, the un-adolescent mind then seldom talked about any living being in such a way. To him, the donkey had finally deserted Mullah Nasruddin. All creatures, especially the four-legged ones, compulsively appeared to him as melancholic long faces that ranged strictly to doling milk, albeit depending to their gender, to ferocious quadrupeds that devoured all else. Nothing in between. They never passed urine nor indulged in playful conjugation.

But as the boy grew up, especially to become an adolescent who indulged in plebiscite, he was enlightened. Particularly, about another innocuous four-legged cousin of the donkey — the ubiquitous cow. He wondered how lucky the cow was to be at the centre of everyone's debate. Jealousy crept in.

donkey_030217060124.jpg
Storyboard: Anirban Ghosh & Tanmoy Chakraborty (Click to enlarge)

Then, he saw a television report that called the cattle the most researched animal in the country. In Nagpur, volunteers with bottles in their hands waited for cows to pass urine at 4 am every morning. Jealousy crept in further. How he wished never to get up from bed just to pee.

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The daily exercise of the Nagpur volunteers was part of an institute’s ten-year-long research, worth about Rs 3 crore, that aimed to prove that cow’s urine can cure cancer, arthritis and renal failure. In Rajasthan, there was a cow fan club that believed that cow dung when smeared on a wall can block nuclear radiation.

How lucky was the cow to be uniquely tested for research to eradicate diseases or save the humanity, he thought begrudgingly.

In his diary where he penned his secret-most thoughts, primarily concerning girls whom he secretly admired and imagined having playful conjugation with — he scribbled the following words next to the sketch of a cow.

A stupendous “mammarian” creature of the truly bovine species.

Last updated: March 03, 2017 | 18:58
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