Love me, love my buffalo!by Rajbir Deswal
मेरी भैंस को डंडा क्यूँ मारा ?
Nowhere on the earth do people love – rather worship — their buffaloes like in Haryana. After the formal greeting of ‘Jai Ram ji ki’, the first topic to be mentioned is invariably either the rains or the milk supply by the buffaloes.
The buffalo is the ‘neighbour’s envy and owner’s pride’. A Haryanvi will be consumed by mosquitoes, get infected, have malarial shivers, but will protect his buffaloes with huge nets, tucked all around with no letting in of machhars.
The owner pampers his buffalo to the extent of not only listening to its heart-beats, but also receiving its emotional vibes. Watching her being bathed with tender affection can make the best loved person jealous of the Black Beauty. No exaggeration then that a hardcore Haryanavi would want to become a buffalo in his next life.
Haryanvis may make their children eat less in the lean period of their earnings, but will empty all their treasures of the best fodder and gram floor, oilseed waste and cottonseed sprouts for the buffalo, for it helps to have her udders ‘filled to the brims’ with quality milk.
Remember Udham Singh (Munish Makhija) – The bald, lanky Haryanavi sitting on a cot with a lathi in hand and a mooing buffalo in the frame of an ad? This depiction has more sense than symbolism.
Even the jokes and pithy Haryanvi idioms and sayings have enough buffalo blood flowing in them. For example, a buffalo entering the water (Bhains pani main jana ) or going up on the canal bank (Bhains patdee pe chadh jana) entail being fined for the unscrupulous but pardonable act on the part of the buffalo.
The Haryanvis sometime back stopped feeding su-babool fodder to buffaloes for they believed it had caused hairfall on the tail of their beautiful pet.
A male calf being born was not a welcome thing for Haryanavis till some time back; and only Yamraj – the death-supervising deity – was seen riding it. But now they have gainfully employed them as draft animals – fit to pull their carts.
There is a saying to the effect that you will have only male calves born to your buffaloes, for the female calves would be stolen away to be replaced by males, if you were sleeping on the care of your buffalo.
Interestingly, the buffaloes recognise their khoonta – stake or tether – in case there was a dispute over their ownership. Even the police employed khoonta-parade to settle the issue between a buffalo owner and a buffalo thief. In this case, the buffalo could without being guided, go up to her tether instinctively, to make a case for its owner.
444444444An interesting joke to end it all. A young, debonair male calf challenged a lazy, old he-buffalo to a race. The ‘infirm and inadequate’ Old Hat replied “Na bhai, baithe-baithe jugaalee karte kaan hilaate rehne ka muqabala karna ho to aaja” – No Sir, if you are willing to compete in the art of just shaking your ears while cud-chewing, then come on!n
No comments:
Post a Comment