Make your father’s day
How will you celebrate your Dad tomorrow?
Shoba Narayan
First Published: Sat, Jun 15 2013. 12 02 AM IST

Tomorrow is a day that will celebrate men who arguably have the coolest jobs in the world: our dads. Ok, that was a lame attempt to link this column to this issue. Dad, Dada, Papa, Pa, Appa, Daddy…what do you call this man? If you are a daughter, this is the man who first smiled admiringly at what you did, etching in your mind the first glimmering of male admiration. Recall the first moment when you wore a pretty frock and walked shyly to show it off to your parents. Recall the gleam in your father’s eye.
Fathers and daughters share a bond that is both tight and intangible. Fathers are the men who teach daughters what it feels like to be adored. They are—usually—the patient counterpoint to the intense drama created by over-invested mothers and cranky siblings. When your brother or sister competes with and denounces you; or when your mother nags you for the nth time. Against this chaos sits the patient bulwark that is the father—reading his newspaper, peering above it absent-mindedly to answer a question that he hasn’t really heard, sipping tea or coffee, saying little but setting the tone, being the stern, silent disciplinarian who may eventually provoke a revolt.
Fathers define daughters’ choices of mates. If yours had a bad temper, chances are that you chose a man who doesn’t yell. Think about it: Your husband is either a carbon copy or the opposite of your father, broadly speaking. This is the insidious effect of fathers on the female psyche.
If you are a son, your father is the man you joust and compete with; the man you look up to and measure yourself against. Fathers and sons have complicated relationships. Sigmund Freud would have you believe that it is because you are competing for the affections of the same woman, that is, one man’s wife and another little-man’s mother. That said, some fathers and sons play ball together and run away from the same woman who rules their lives. They gang up against mom and take comfort from being in the same team. Fathers provide the template from which sons spring. Everything that they do and become springs from variations of this theme.
How will you celebrate your Dad tomorrow? If your father is above 70, chances are that he won’t want very much. “We are downsizing,” he’ll say. What do you give a person who has everything and doesn’t want anything? How do you show you care?
My sister-in-law in Florida came up with an ingenious gift. She decided to sing 82 songs for her father over the course of the year. She sends them as MP3 recordings by email and her Dad listens to them.
In order to be successful, gifts require thought, timing and appropriateness. Here is a list of suggestions if you are stumped for ideas this Father’s Day.
u Take your Dad out to lunch. Cliché, I know, but when is the last time you did it? Just you and him. Every parent I know longs for a connection with their children. Give your “Baba” the gift of your scintillating (or not) company.
u Make him a compilation of some sort: music, a photo collage, or a collection of your Papa’s favourite things, either actual or symbolic. If your father likes golf, put a golf ball into the gift basket. For any parent, knowing that your child understands you—gets you—is profoundly satisfying.
u Take a trip together. It could even be a day trip. You may think that you know everything about your father. But a new situation (or place) can change things; throw elements of surprise into a relationship that you both take for granted.
u Buy something that you know your father won’t buy for himself, be it a Montblanc pen or a Louis Vuitton messenger bag. This is the gift-as-splurge principle and you’ll be surprised at how often it works.
u Take lessons together. If bonding with your father is too difficult and awkward, this is a good way to spend time together without getting on each other’s nerves.
u Enable your father just as he did for you. If he has been talking about going to Mecca for years, help him achieve this goal. If he wants to see the Himalayas, maybe charter a flight over the mountains. If possible, go with him.
u Make your Dad’s dream come true. If he is a lifelong Kishori Amonkar fan, take him backstage when she comes to town. Hard to do, but what a gift.
u Do something for your Appa that he doesn’t like to do. It could be as simple as cleaning up his closet, or enrolling him in a gym. Your Mom will thank you for this.
u To paraphrase an old quote, we live in a time where everybody knows the price of everything but the value of nothing. Give gifts that have no connection with price. Write a poem, draw a portrait, show Dad a rainbow, buy him vitamins, give him a hug every day, or simply listen. When Dad comes to visit, stop everything and sit down with him. You may be surprised to hear what he says; what he is thinking about.
Shoba Narayan’s daughter’s father would love backstage passes to Wimbledon or Wembley.
Also read | Shoba’s previous Lounge columns
First Published: Sat, Jun 15 2013. 12 02 AM IST

Should read Carol Gilligan’s work. Hadn’t known about it at all.

The piece is here and below. The comments are interesting.

The Dalai Lama Says Female Leaders Are More Compassionate … Hmm

“If the circumstances are such that a female Dalai Lama is more useful, then automatically a female Dalai Lama will come,” he said.
SHOBA NARAYANJUN 13 2013, 2:09 PM ET

Jessica Rinaldi/Reuters

As a Hindu, I often think that if I wanted to choose another religion to follow, it would be Buddhism—and not just because I might get to hug Richard Gere. The Dalai Lama’s recent comments in Australia about how his successor could be a woman only added light to my eyes, and made me exhale into a perfect Lotus pose.

Speaking at a press conference, the exiled 78-year-old leader, suggested that women were better equipped to lead the world in the current time. “If the circumstances are such that a female Dalai Lama is more useful, then automatically a female Dalai Lama will come,” he said.

His Holiness Tenzin Gyatso was then asked about the bitter gender debate that is permeating Australian politics. Prime Minister Julia Gillard has been accusing her opposition Liberal Party of being sexist and removing women from the political sphere. Earlier this week, a menu for a Liberal Party fundraiser was leaked on social media. It carried the line: “Julia Gillard Kentucky Fried Quail: small breasts, huge thighs and a big red box.” The chef who created the menu called it a joke that never made it out of the kitchen. He said that the opposition leaders had not seen the menu. Ms. Gillard called the menu “grossly sexist and offensive.” The menu has gone viral and evinced reactions all over Australia. “Even when women ARE at the table, we’re still on the menu,” tweeted a woman in response.

The Dalai Lama responded to the gender question by referring to rising economic inequality around the globe. The world, he said, needs leaders with compassion. And in his mind, that means the world needs more female leaders.

“In that respect, biologically, females have more potential,” he said. “Females have more sensitivity about others’ wellbeing … In my own case, my father, very short temper. On a few occasions I also got some beatings. But my mother was so wonderfully compassionate.”

This is where I lost him. Are women truly more compassionate than men? In responding to the sexist saga that has Australia all a-twitter, is the Dalai Lama himself being sexist?

(This is the problem with us feminists: we bristle. People pay us a compliment—heck, the Dalai Lama pays women a compliment—and some of us, me included, take it amiss. He calls us compassionate and we call him sexist. But even if you take the Dalai Lama—given as he is to simple, playful remarks—out of the equation, the question remains: are women more compassionate than men? )

Research is both fascinating and conflicting on whether women are more compassionate than men. In 1958, Harvard psychologist, Lawrence Kohlberg wrote his dissertation on what would come to be called Kohlberg’s Stages of Moral Development. In it, he posited that males are morally superior to females because they scored higher on tests that measured impartial justice and equality. His research was considered groundbreaking at the time and continues to be widely cited. Kohlberg’s conclusions were challenged by his student, Carol Gilligan, who suggested that morality and ethics are based on gender and culture. Gilligan’s research posits that ethics follow two parallel paths: the justice perspective and the care perspective (no prizes for guessing which sex has which). In her 1982 book In a Different Voice, described by Harvard University Press as the “little book that started a revolution,” Gilligan suggests that people with the justice perspective (mostly men) base their ethical decisions on impartiality, fairness, rights, and justice. Those with the care perspective base their ethics on care, compassion, and empathy. Gilligan says that most people will base their choices on either one of these perspectives even if they are aware of both.

Other research suggests that women are socially compassionate but morally traditional. A 2005 study, for example, found that women would support legislation that would reduce income differences but would also oppose the legalization of marijuana. Chinese martial arts movies would have you believe that it is all a matter of perception. Men are compassionate but are not taught to show it. Instead, they are encouraged to hold it all in even if they can empathize with the other party. Last year, British ethicist Roger Steare, who has administered the “Moral DNA test” to over 60,000 volunteers in 200 countries, concluded that women make decisions based on how they impact others—”which tends to produce better decisions.” Men, concluded Steare, are more self-interested.

Despite all the research, or perhaps I should say, in spite of all the research, what is important is the qualities of the leader in question. So yes, let us advocate for more female leaders because that is what is fair. But we should also be advocating for more compassionate leaders, whatever their gender.

SHOBA NARAYAN is the author of Return to India: A Memoir.

jojoabc123 • 6 hours ago
So basically good leaders should be elected and not influenced by quotas based on gender politics
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notbobcousy • 6 hours ago
This is the problem with us feminists: we bristle. People pay us a compliment—heck, the Dalai Lama pays women a compliment—and some of us, me included, take it amiss. He calls us compassionate and we call him sexist. But even if you take the Dalai Lama—given as he is to simple, playful remarks—out of the equation, the question remains: are women more compassionate than men?
I think most feminists don’t bristle at ideas like women are more compassionate. I often hear feminists say things like “if women ran the world there’d be no wars”, or wax on about the supposed positive virtues of women, and I hear little pushback from feminists against such statements. In the case of the Dalai Lama, these comments will probably go unnoticed by people who would write volumes on it if the Dalai Lama said men were better in some way.

It’s also worth pointing out the Dalai Lama is a feminist, and I guarantee that in saying women were more compassionate, he saw himself as making a feminist statement. Stephanie Meyer recently said she was a feminist because she thought the world would be a better place with women, and while people criticized her, it wasn’t for that statement but because people felt her novels don’t reflect feminist ideas.

To me, what he said is a feminist statement. I just am skeptical of it (at the least, if you think women are better at men at being compassionate, you oughta conclude that men are better on some other personality traits. I see it as nature vs nurture, and if you agree with the studies saying women are inherently more compassionate, there’s probably similar studies ascribing positive traits to men over women. But many people, feminists included, seem to agree with such statements when it’s something positive about women, disagree when it’s positive about men).
2 •Reply•Share ›

CJ Anton • 4 hours ago
What a crock. Compassion wasn’t needed before now? We only just recently discovered this fabulous compassion allegedly possessed (mostly) by women? Very solid of the DL to say it would be cool with him if, thousands of years in, a woman got to take the top job in Buddhism. Good luck convincing the monks.
2 •Reply•Share ›

CAinDC • 4 hours ago
You really are stressing the age thing! “Speaking at a press conference, the exiled 78-year-old leader, who is 78, “
1 •Reply•Share ›

Eubie • an hour ago
Perhaps it would have been more relevant to reference the economic research on altruism, which shows that men tend to be more generous when generosity is less costly, while women tend to be more generous when the costs of generosity are higher [http://econ.ucsd.edu/~jandreon...] . And, this research result is further muddied when expectations of payback are factored in, leading to a finding that men and women are about equally altruistic [http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de...]. The problem with the Moral DNA test is that it involves self-reporting, notorious for its strain on reliability.

I sent this essay to The Sexes and it was published today. It was hard to write because I didn’t want to make it personal– which comes easy to me. I wanted to put “content” as my father in law would say. Studies, research, numbers– work for me

I sent in the copy yesterday. Eleanor edited it and here it is today. Thrilled.

But what a joy to see my beautiful 75-year-old mother change from the soft, traditional, tentative homemaker that she was into a deeply spiritual guru/teacher that she has become in this new city that she has adopted as her home. She moved to Bangalore with my father about four years ago. Students sought her out to learn mantra chanting and japam and slokas. She has been a Srividya Upasaka for the last forty years and it has given her ‘samatvam’ or equanimity. The ability to face life and death without fear, anxiety or guilt. Sigh! Wish I had that.

She was extremely tentative about taking on students to teach them japam and Srividya. There is the emphasis in Srividya that you have to give deeksha to the right student or else it will impact the guru. But we encouraged Amma to expand her circle. Now she has scores of youngsters who seek her out for spiritual counseling and wisdom. This Sunday, her students are organizing a day-trip to Mysore and its temples.

Amma has always revelled in my accomplishments. She would come and sit in the front row and watch with pride and joy. I thought it is high time I returned the favor. I am going with her on this bus-trip to watch and enjoy, even though I am very conflicted about religion (perhaps because she is so firm and strong in it). Last year, she joined Facebook, learned its ways and is now fluent in it.

My parents don’t see this blog because they see me live everyday. Over the years, I have come to feel that one of the virtues of living in India is the forced encounter of elders. These buzurg log expose you to aspects– such as temple visits– that are absent in normal lives. They give a texture that is sometimes irritating but always expanding.

Here is a photo from Amma’s Facebook page. Mrs. Padma Narayanaswamy: healer, teacher, meditator and Facebook user
I have removed the Publicize settings so that this post will NOT go to twitter or Linkedin.

The cow chronicles: bovines can cry
Everyone from Charles Darwin on has a view about whether animals have emotions
Shoba Narayan
First Published: Sat, Jun 08 2013. 12 07 AM IST

Updated: Sat, Jun 08 2013. 11 17 AM IST
The next morning, both Sarala and I are strained as we meet for milk. “We have left the calf,” I say, nay accuse, “just as you wanted.” “I know. Did you tell the staff to take special care of our calf?” I shake my head. “I just followed your husband’s lead. He didn’t speak to anyone and neither did I,” I reply.
“Why, ma?” she accuses. “You should have slipped Rs.50 or Rs.100 to the staff and told them to take care of our little one. They do that if you ask for it. They will even brand your calf with an iron so that you can identify it when it grows up. That is painful for our baby so we don’t need to do any branding. But at least, you should have told them to keep an eye on it.”
“I thought your husband would do all that,” I reply. “How did I know?”
We bicker—feeling bad, laying blame.
“I didn’t sleep at all last night,” says Sarala. “I was thinking about the calf the whole time. Look at its mother.”
Ananda Lakshmi (AL) is mooing loudly and has been for the last hour. She searches for her calf. Had it been around, it would have mooed in reply. AL doesn’t stop. The milkman approaches her with his pail. Selva is out of town. This is a paid labourer. Sarala walks with him and stands in front of AL, “making nice”, as she calls it. She rubs AL’s forehead and ears, speaking softly. Sarala plans to take AL to the grassy meadow inside. They are worried that AL will develop a fever. This is what cows do when they are sad.
“People think that cows have only five senses,” says Sarala. “They are wrong. Cows are like humans. They have six senses. They form relationships; they feel pain. They can’t speak. That’s the only difference.”
Sarala continues in this vein, vocalizing my thoughts; wondering out loud if the calf slept last night and how it was faring without its mother.
“If the calf goes to suckle other cows, they will kick its face with their hind legs,” she says. “Poor thing, it has to receive this abuse at first before it can latch on to another cow-mother.”
I bring the milk home, feeling terrible. Separating a child from its mother has a huge resonance in most cultures. In India, a cow and calf are used as allegories for maternal love. When I search for “cow and calf art” on the Internet, I am stunned by the number of images I get. There are bronze sculptures, bass reliefs, miniature paintings, folk art from pretty much every ancient culture—Egyptian, Etruscan, Persian, Mediterranean and predominantly, Indian. A ninth century sandstone relief depicting a calf suckling its mother is currently at the Art Institute of Chicago in the US. No matter how much I tell myself otherwise, I cannot help feeling that I have failed—betrayed—the newborn calf and its mother. Have I committed a sin? Should I not have gotten involved?
The next day too, AL moos loudly for her calf. It continues for a week.
The photographer wants to go and shoot pictures of the goshala. I offer to accompany him. I want to see how the calf is faring.
It is noon when we reach the goshala. All the calves have been rearranged. I wonder if I can find my calf. We poke around and find it a few yards from its original location. It is sitting down desultorily. It doesn’t jump and bound towards us when it sees us. Instead, it stays in its place, staring unblinkingly at us. It looks okay. Thank God!
I give it the jaggery water and pineapples that I have brought. A dark, thin woman clad in a cotton sari walks up. She is part of the staff at the goshala. I offer her a box of sweets that I have brought—a clumsy attempt at a bribe.
“Please take care of this one,” I say, pointing at my calf.
The woman stares at me. “They come one day and go the next,” she says.
I don’t blink. “Some people bring the calf just a day after birth. How will it survive? It will catch an infection.”
Ours is seven days old, I tell her. Please put a thread or a rope around its neck so we can identify it.
She takes the sweet-box wordlessly and walks away.
Satisfied that the calf is okay, we walk to the main enclosure. A massive vaccination exercise is going on. Four men grab each animal with a rope and bring it to the wicket fence where the veterinarian waits with his injection. He inserts the needle into the rump of each struggling cow. Animals in fear exhibit similar responses. I’ve seen it in my dog and I see it here with the cows.
Each cow arches away from the injection-holding vet; its mouth frothing with saliva; the whites of its eyes visible and dilated. The intensity of its response—the wild, fearful, frothing nostrils and crazed eyes—is out of proportion to the simple pinprick of the injection. Then again, the animal doesn’t know that beforehand.
As far as it is concerned, capture leads to bad things, ranging from a ride in a tightly packed van to a butcher’s block. Uncertainty is what the animal is reacting to; not the injection. The vet pricks the animal and they let it go. The helpers dab the vaccinated cows with yellow paint for identification. “It is to protect them against foot-and-mouth disease,” says the vet. “Once they contract that, we cannot do anything.”
An hour later, we go back to see the calf again. I kneel down in front of it, apologize, and say goodbye.
Research about whether animals have emotions is frequently conflicting. Everyone from Charles Darwin on has a view. Two years ago, researchers at Newcastle University in the UK interviewed 516 farmers. They discovered that farmers who named their cows got more milk from the animals than those who didn’t. The study, published in the journal Anthrozoös, suggests that naming animals led to a personalized relationship with each cow, which in turn led to increased milk production. In 2011, a researcher at The University of Northampton in the UK suggested that cows have complex social and emotional lives. Their heart rates went up when they were separated from the herd and they formed bonds with certain specific animals. Cows have best friends, the research indicated.
Not all scientists are on the “animals have emotions” bandwagon. The usual criticism is that humans anthropomorphize animals and attribute human emotions to them: Because we feel fear before an injection, we assume animals do too, when in fact they may just be reacting instinctively. That is the critique anyway.
As I study the research on cows and emotions, I come across one item of good news, which I sort of knew intuitively. Animals have a different sort of memory. Cows, for example, have great spatial memories; witness their ability to navigate the roads of Bangalore. Their emotional memory, however, is for a shorter time span than humans. Calves that are separated from their mothers quickly forge new connections with other cows. Their mothers will miss the calf for some time but will adjust far quicker than a human mother who has been separated from her baby. I knew this with dogs. When a litter is given away, the mother dog perhaps mourns for a while but adjusts to life without her pups.
I hope that AL will adjust to life without her calf.
Shoba Narayan is done with cows…and calves. This is the last column in the series.
Also Read | Read the earlier four-part cow chronicles and the present series
First Published: Sat, Jun 08 2013. 12 07 AM IS

Buying cleaning products is a great way to feel virtuous

Every night, after my family is asleep, I go on the computer and indulge in a secret, somewhat shameful activity: I search for the latest cleaning tools, and buy them.
I do this not so much because I love to clean – although I do, occasionally – but simply to know that I can, should the need or desire arise. Cleaning supplies are my insurance policy and fantasy combined.
They also offer me a little bit more.
In his book Thinking Fast and Slow, Nobel-prize winning economist Daniel Kahnemann explores the “halo effect” in which the perception of positive qualities in a thing, or part of a thing, leads to positive perception of related things.
This is exactly what happens with me with my surreptitious accumulation of cleaning supplies. The mere existence of these objects gives me a halo effect – about myself. They make me look and feel as if I were a person who focuses on keeping a clean house, when in fact my home is closer to chaos on the spectrum of tidy to untidy.
Consider what I have in my closet. There are Japanese balls that promise to get your laundry cleaner when you throw them in with the wash. There is a giant Karcher vacuum cleaner that I bought because it promised to clean my floors with just steam and water. I have used it about five times in the five years I have owned it. There’s a whole array of mops that promise to Swiff, spray, “twist and shout”, and dance in circles.
There are wet mops, dry ones, ones that wring themselves out. They offer great therapy after a quarrel. When I get the urge to wring somebody’s neck, I pick up my mop. My favourite is a sleek microfibre one that matches the closet full of yellow microfibre cloths I buy in bulk at Costco. Microfibre, I think, is the greatest thing since soapsuds.
I have Oxo soap-dispensing palm brushes that I leave near every washbasin in my home, hoping to nudge everyone who washes hands to clean the basin with the smart-looking brush. (It works about 50 per cent of the time.)
I have wash cloths, imported from Sweden, that claim to hold 50 times their weight in water. I have laundry detergents of every kind, including one made from cow’s urine.
Other people may have their own pleasures, but for me the cleaning supplies section of Amazon does it every time. To gain composure and self-esteem, all I need to do is smell some sulphates and phosphates.
My latest object of interest is a Slipper Genie: a microfibre cloth attached to slippers: you can simply walk around to get clean floors. I plan to kit out my entire family with these slippers: plaid for my husband, cartoony for my teenage daughter, pink for my 11-year old, and neon yellow for me.
These slippers are cheaper than the i-Robot I coveted a few years ago, and play right into two key features that I look for in cleaning supplies: how to clean without actually cleaning, and how to clean in an environmentally sustainable way?
The i-Robot captivated me because it cleaned without me having to do a thing. The slippers have the same seduction, and they cost $12.99 (Dh48) instead of a few hundred dollars.
Do I actually clean? After a fashion. I pour lemon juice in every toilet at night so that it can do its bleaching work overnight. All I need to do is flush in the morning – and ignore the complaints that the bathroom smells like a lemonade stand.
There are some cleaning jobs I love (anything involving water); and others I hate (folding clothes, brushing lint). Like every connoisseur, I distinguish between tidiness, which I think is overrated, and cleanliness, which floats my boat. Tidiness involves organisation; cleaning involves elbow grease, as I like to say.
I can walk through an untidy room with insouciance. Piles of paper on the floor? They don’t bother me. Dirty clothes lying around? I merely step over them.
But if there’s a stain on my pristine floor, I need to know: Where’s my trusted mop?

Shoba Narayan is the author of Return to India: a memoir.

June 4, 2013, 4:39 pm 5 Comments
Breast Feeding Killed My Focus on Work. I Don’t Miss It.
By SHOBA NARAYAN

Years ago, when I lived on the Upper West Side, I used to have coffee with a bunch of mothers from my daughter’s school — the Philosophy Day School, “opposite Mayor Bloomberg’s house,” as we used to tell the taxi drivers. We would drop our children off in the morning and walk around the corner to drink mediocre brew and forge connections at Nectar Cafe.

Over weeks and months, we got to know one another. Selena used to work in Spain for the fashion brand Loewe. Charlotte had quit her job as a commodities trader when her third daughter was born. Megan had given up immigration law and worked as a docent part-time. I had graduated from the Columbia Journalism School and worked as a freelancer for… well, anyone who would take me. We were, in other words, the archetypal women whom the billionaire trader Paul Tudor Jones mocked last month in his speech at the University of Virginia: women whose laserlike focus on work was “overwhelmed” by motherhood. We were women with babies to bosoms, reminiscing about the hard-charging past lives we had traded to stay home and raise our children.

We were loud of laugh and brash of opinion. Sometimes, we marveled at how firebrands like us had ended up as traditional wives and mothers, holding the fort while our husbands traveled. It was our choice, we told ourselves. Most days, we believed it. We were smart, fiercely independent feminists who had compromised for the sake of the greater good: our families, our children. It was temporary, this exile of ours — until the kids grew up a bit; until our spouses traveled less; until we got that dual degree; until we found our calling; until I got my green card.

A funny thing happened on the way to my citizenship. Years passed. None of us “soccer moms” went back to work — a situation I would encounter again and again when I moved to Singapore, and then to India. Women who had met their husbands while earning their M.B.A. at Wharton, women who had graduated at the top of their law school, women who were smarter than their husbands and had made more money while dating, turned it all in to stay home and raise babies. We lost that killer instinct — that ruthlessness Mr. Jones alluded to when he said that mothers would never make good traders.

As a feminist who believes herself to be equal to any man, it is easy for me to take umbrage at Mr. Jones’s remarks. As a mother who enjoyed having babies to bosom, it is difficult for me not to nod in agreement. When you are caught up with a baby — your baby — the world does fall away. Petty competitions do not make sense any more. Trading does seem like small change relative to the rich rewards of motherhood.

I find myself drawn to a small phrase in Mr. Jones’s diatribe that nobody seems to have noticed or remarked on. Forget the female body references that got everyone’s goat. (“As soon as that baby’s lips touched that girl’s bosom, forget it.”) Forgive the finality with which he dismissed women’s futures as traders — “never,” “period.” Focus instead on the relationship that Jones described in poetic terms: “the most beautiful experience, which a man will never share, about the connection between that mother and that baby.” Do you hear the envy in that phrase? Do you hear the longing of a parent who wants to experience that “connection”? I do.

I realize that my happy experience with breast-feeding (I nursed both my daughters for two years) will not apply to everyone. I have friends who hated nursing their children, and I have other friends to whom the notion of having babies, let alone being stuck at home with them, was torture. But I do believe that this connection mothers share with their children gives them intangible, immeasurable fulfillment. I suspect that sensitive men recognize this bond and envy it, that they feel what Viktor Frankl called “the existential vacuum.”

O.K., maybe I am exaggerating. Or maybe I am gloating.

By feeling insulted, we are allowing Mr. Jones and his world to dictate the parameters of the debate. Why not change the paradigm? Why not celebrate the connection that he describes instead of bristling at it?

In our race to keep up with men, we women have forgotten the joys that are given only to us. We should revel in motherhood instead of discounting it. Instead of rapping Mr. Jones on the knuckles, we should smile serenely at the glories that are denied him. Instead of saying, “Sexist son of a dog,” we should say, “Suck on that, baby — no pun intended.”

The cow chronicles: losing the calf

There is a reason that Taurus, the sign associated with the bull, is associated with being stubborn
Shoba Narayan
First Published: Sat, Jun 01 2013. 12 07 AM IST

Updated: Sat, Jun 01 2013. 12 20 PM IST
The goshala is an hour outside Bangalore. Our auto bounces along over flyovers and underpasses. The calf lies at our feet serenely. We take a turn from the main highway and are on dusty village roads. Soon, we are entering the “Bangalore Gorakshan Shala”, which translates to “Bangalore Save the Cow Shelter”. It is 108 acres of prime Bangalore land that would be worth millions of dollars if developed. Instead it is overrun by bovines. 108 is an auspicious number in Hinduism. I doubt that the number of acres bought way back in the 1930s was a coincidence.
There is an arch at the entrance, almost as if we are entering a religious institution. A couple of men sit on the side, napping in their chairs. No one stops or questions us as we walk in, pushing a reluctant calf. Cows don’t like to be prodded and neither do calves. There is a reason that Taurus, the sign associated with the bull, is associated with being stubborn. A cow—or calf—likes to walk at its own pace.
Naidu pushes the calf and his cousin pulls it from the front. It takes the two of them to guide the calf into the space inside. There are about 400 calves sitting under the covered shed. Most are napping in the afternoon heat. Some bleat as we walk by. Some are standing and eating. Most are male calves that look like ours.
The goshala is divided into several areas, each with a few hundred cows in them. At the entrance is a large fenced area inside which are the healthiest animals: a mix of Holstein-Friesian cows, desi breeds and bulls. They stand there eating the hay that is spread all over the floor, and look up inquiringly as we walk by into the calves’ enclave. There are four other sections, one for desi breeds like the Gir and the Saahil that come from the north; there is another enclosure full of black buffaloes with curved horns. In the back are sick cows, with polio or foot-and-mouth disease. There is a gate beyond which, I am told, are the areas where dead cows are buried.
“Look, they even have a mouse,” marvels Naidu as we walk past the rabbit enclosure.
“Look over there! It’s a camel. Two camels. Actually, four,” says his cousin.
On the roofs of the sheds are thousands of doves.
“It costs us Rs.20 lakh a month to run the goshala,” says Kishenlalji Kothari, the secretary of the society, when I meet him later at his home. He reels off a long list of numbers on what it takes to run the goshala.
There are about 1,000 cows in the shelter and some 400 calves. Only about 50-60 of them are milking cows. The rest are abandoned cattle—left there by farmers who cannot keep them. Each calf is given a litre of milk a day that they buy from the milk trucks which stop at the goshala every day. Forty-five staff members take care of the animals. A husband and wife team is given Rs.10,000 as a monthly salary. They have a doctor on the staff and several on call from the local veterinary college. They buy 300kg of maize and wheat from local farmers to feed the cows. They spend Rs.1 lakh a month on just water.
“We treat these animals as family members,” says Kothari. “It is hard to convince non-vegetarians. They think we are just wasting money. But we don’t want to convince them.”
The society runs with contributions from its 500 members, of which 32 form the working committee. Elections are held every three years. Their annual budget is Rs.2.5 crore.
Is it because you are a Jain that you do this, I ask Kothari. He demurs. “Being Indians, we consider the cow a sacred animal. We solve their grievances, save them from butchers. In the whole world—not just India—do you know anyone who has not used a product from a cow?”
I think of my vegan friends who eschew all dairy products but I get his point about the usefulness of this animal.
The society wants to increase the number of animals to 10,000, says Kothari. They dream of using 50 of their acres for the goshala and then building hospitals, orphanages and old-age homes on the remaining land. The goal is that the goshala becomes not just self-sufficient but also supports other goshalas. They want to educate the farmers to value animals. “Everything I am is because of the blessing of the cow,” says Kothari. He challenges me to think of a goal that I want to attain. Pray to this animal and if you attain your goal, support us a little, he says. “Anyone who comes to the goshala and spends some time with these animals will get peace of mind.”
Naidu and I are not peaceful at the calves’ enclosure. We are distressed. Naidu holds the calf and looks around, wondering where to leave him. There is a vacant spot. Naidu leads the calf and quickly ties the rope to the pillar. A neighbouring calf comes forward and smells the new entrant inquiringly. Cows, they say, have a keen sense of smell. They can smell things miles away. But not their own cow dung perhaps. How else can they stand amid their dung?
The tied calf stands there uncertainly. The other animals look fairly healthy. There is the odd calf that is lying on the ground, gasping for breath, clearly sick. Blood is seeping out of another calf’s rear. But for the most part, the calves are standing, sitting, napping and bleating. They don’t look deprived or abused.
A huge truck filled with hay comes in. Two men begin to unload the hay. Naidu and I watch our calf uncertainly for a few minutes. It is still standing. It doesn’t bleat reproachfully at us. What do we do? Are we doing the right thing?
Decisively, we turn and walk away without looking back.

Shoba Narayan didn’t sleep that night after her visit to the goshala. This is the fourth column in the series.