The Cow is a Kind of Quadrangular Creature by Subimal Misra
by Subimal Misra
The cow is a kind of quadrangular creature that conceals the cosmic beam in its eyelids. There are bits and pieces of all kinds of treasures in cows’ heads, with which they ruminate over everything about the world as they chew the cud. Dad had once brought a cow from Honduras which actually exactly reproduced the work of its forebears, and it had destroyed the colourful slough of plywood, fabricated over thirty years, which people at every turn call democracy. And ever since then, we steadily became well versed in cow-related matters. Dad explained to us that howsoever confident we might be regarding cows’ legs, we weren’t correct, because cows could have two or three or four or even five legs — there was nothing certain about that. Cows could definitely declare a state of emergency, or, if they so desired, they possessed the capability to bring about a military coup at whim.
They loved to chew furtively on newspapers or the rolled-up pages of the constitution. Dry roots and tubers from beneath the soil; syntax — the alphabet system; their own tails, thorny plants, unused cartridges — all this, everything, was their fodder, and they derived great pleasure from eating these. But it wouldn’t do to think that cows did not possess a sense of beauty, or that they were not aware of their own class interest. They dearly loved to sing “The forests are alive with spring”. When the nation needed pharmaceutical factories, it was cows who reminded the ministers to increase the production of cosmetics instead, and it was cows who advised them to manufacture armaments, keeping people starved.
To look at the cow’s tail, there seems to be nothing useful about it, but many believed that it came in handy for nuclear disarmament. Even if cows usually appeared to be quite innocent, they could actually become terribly bloodthirsty. If they got the appropriate opportunity and means, they even killed someone as un-troublesome as Archimedes. Cows can’t tolerate others’ views at all. Some people speak in whispers about a special kind of cow. These cows apparently use the horns on their head as antennae, and they nurture a hostile attitude towards every kind of thoughtfulness. They say: “Only what I say is correct, and that’s what you must do.” Asking questions is always banned in the cows’ world. There’s a worldwide revolution taking place among cows. A perpetual uprising happening. Their clothes and garb, thinking, everything’s changing rapidly. Those who can’t stay in step with all this get rejected. They become obsolete.
There aren’t just innards and intestines in the cow’s belly, there’s every kind of wicked design there, every kind of evil intent to keep humans human. Cows couldn’t attain ultimate bliss unless they feuded among themselves. There are many molesters among cows. Most of the cows know a Sten gun and can discern the difference between a country-bomb and a pomelo. All the cerebral excellence of cows depends upon a kind of cosmic beam. Cows worship in Kalighat, but again, given the opportunity, they also commit adultery. Dropping bombs on children’s schools makes them happy. They love to use diaphragms. The twelfth cow that Dad had reared in his lifetime loved to hear Beethoven, and from time to time it took to sexual assault. It once showed the precise site from where civilisation and everything else had begun. But what it eventually did was unimaginable. One day, getting the opportunity at night, it raped Dad and saw to it that Ma was compelled to go to that room.
Although ordinary looking, cows are highly exceptional beings. Water is water to them and pistols are merely pistols, but they don’t see female bodies as merely female bodies. One hears that in some places the cows’ urge for self-inquiry is so profound that they end up writing Mein Kampf, or getting into the Guernica as mites, they keep devouring it, robbing it of the lustre of the hues and curves of the lines. Everyone knows about vampires sitting on cows and sucking their blood at night, but what people don’t know is that sometimes cows suck away all the vampire’s blood, leaving it a paper-white spine. It is fatuous to say that there are differences of opinion among scholars regarding cows; actually no two scholars can ever be unanimous about cows.
Some cows suffer indigestion from eating too much, while some cows get by eating very little all their lives and scuffling among themselves. There are divisions among cows along lines of nation-time-role. A cow of the year ’77 will never chew on dry straw like a cow of the year ’47. You can’t quickly tell the colour of the pupils of a cow’s eyes, but they can rest their entire weight on two legs and stretch their necks and look out at the moonlight through the window. Cows love to see nude cows very much and they call that art. In some species of cows, wearing undergarments is also in vogue. Up-to-date cows think about sexuality, they also think about revolution, while for some of them, arranging cacti decoratively on the veranda is a daily ritual. The shadow of the Tata Centre building falls quite often on the cows as they feed on grass in the Maidan. Cows are extremely wary about one thing. If any of them read books or thought contrarily, they were declared to be dangerous. And if they’re of an extremely wayward kind, they are made to stand in front of a firing squad. In this respect, the cows’ civilization is incomparable. However, it’s true that cows themselves shall one day decide on the means of liberation of cows.
This story has been translated from Bengali by V Ramaswamy, a translator based in Kolkata. His works include rendering in English The Golden Gandhi Statue from America by Subimal Misra, the first of a four-volume series of Misra’s short fiction in English translation.
Subimal Misra (b. 1943) is an anti-establishment and experimental writer in Bengali and lives in Kolkata. He has written exclusively in small, limited-circulation literary magazines (or little magazines) from the late sixties. About thirty volumes of his stories, novellas, novels, plays and essays have been published. The Golden Gandhi Statue from America, a volume of his early stories in English translation, was published in 2010.