Willy Trolove: Don't have a cow in Delhi

COMMENT


I know cows. I grew up with them. My bones are built with their milk.

I wouldn't say that some of my best friends are cows (except on the occasions that they are), but in years gone by I've enjoyed many an amiable discussion with cows over a bale of hay or a spread of steaming cowpats. I have not, however, had the pleasure of shopping with one. Until now.

I am in Delhi, where the road code is one line long: cows have the right of way. They are sacred here, occupying a slot on the Hindu worship spectrum somewhere below the Gods but above the Indian cricket team.

Walking down the street, people jam the senses. Everyone demands something: money, my custom, that I get out of the way. I fight off the beggars, the pickpockets and the shoe-shiners. I try not to trip over the dogs and the children and the piles of rubbish that might have someone under them. I leap sideways into a shop to avoid being run down by a motorbike. And I smack into a cow.

The cow is uninterested by my smacking into it. It looks at me with that "I'm a cow, I'm uninterested, I'm standing in a shop" kind of look. After a few seconds it looks away and finds something else to be uninterested in.

The proprietor isn't concerned that he has a cow in his shop. This is odd because the cow clearly isn't buying anything, and the concept of going into a shop and not buying something is foreign to your Indian retailer. If you say to him "just browsing", he hears "I want to buy all these things over here and I'll pay five times too much for them".

Even if "just browsing" was accepted in India, it wouldn't be sensible to encourage it among your bovine customers. For cows, browsing has digestive connotations.

"Can I help you, madam?" a shop assistant might ask a cow that was just browsing.

"Moo," the cow would reply, as the just-browsed merchandise made its ponderous way to stomach number four.

Browsing is the last thing on the shop-owner's mind. He sees me, leaps into the half a square metre of shop not occupied by the cow, and starts selling me a towel.

I don't want a towel. I tell him this. But from the other side of the cow he gives me a look that suggests I'd be a fool if I thought I could find a better towel elsewhere.

He drapes a towel over the cow to demonstrate its various drying advantages. The cow, uninterested though it is, doesn't appreciate being used as a towel rack. It shuffles sideways and jams me against the wall.

To leave the shop without buying the towel I have to shimmy my way alongside the cow. This is another shopping first. It's a retailing ploy we could adopt at home: "Come, buy a towel. Shimmy along a cow! Shopping fun for everyone."

The owner thinks that my shimmying along the cow to escape is a bargaining tactic. He comes after me. I tell him that I stepped into his shop to avoid a motorbike and I'm not in the market for a towel.

He takes no notice and continues his sales pitch.

The further we get from his shop, the more he drops the price of the towel. Eventually we reach the train station. Having exhausted all of his conventional marketing techniques, he resorts to charity. He tries to give me the towel.

"Look, mate," I say, "it's very kind of you, but I don't want your blasted towel."

He is devastated. I board the train.

Late that night I return to Delhi. The streets are deserted. The towel shop is closed.

My hotel overlooks a vegetable market. The stallholders have gone home and left their unsold vegetables on the street. As I walk through the market, there are shapes in the alleyways, beasts ruminating in the shadows, sinister figures watching without interest. The night is silent, save for the grinding of a hundred jaws.

Cows. Not just a few, but a vast herd, choking the square, masticating vegetables.

This is the heart of a heaving metropolis but there is not a soul around. It's like some weird science fiction movie where the cows have taken over the world by accident (they are too uninterested to have done it on purpose).

I am astounded, but I am also exhausted and filthy. I scamper through the cows to the hotel and up to my room. I take off my clothes and leap into the shower. It's only when I am finished and dripping that I realise how badly equipped the bathroom is.

There's not a towel in sight.