Generations of my family up to me went cattle grazing in the forest. I can vividly recount some aspects of styles and experiences from my grandfather. I saw him do it. I saw my grandmother do it. I saw a bit of my mother do it. I don’t remember seeing my father behind the cattle, though he has told stories of his engagement with the quadrupeds when he was small. When he was big, which means when he was big with his education, wife, and children, cattle grazing was smaller than his priorities.
Grandfather had a thorough style. He ensured that every animal (I mean goat or cow) was attended to and each well-fed before he brought them back home from the jungle. He almost always came home either with bundles of saplings and firewood or wild yams as gifts. If not any such thing, he would drag a fallen twig to use as a fence. Our second uncle (the one next to Dad) mostly accompanied Grandfather. But he was in need of care and attendance for being too slow to move and respond to calls and orders. Though grandfather often chided him for his slowness, he had profound love and attention for this child of his. Uncle felt almost helpless at home in the daytime, with very little to accomplish. Cattle grazing gave him a purpose, and being with his ever-chiding papa lent him the utmost sense of security.
Well, getting back to the style of grazing. I said Grandfather attended to the animals thoroughly. He became one with the herd, made sure that each of them felt his presence, followed his movement and sound, and nibbled everything that he identified as a grass-edible. The animals depended on him and almost forgot to explore their food themselves. Whenever he had to stay home and someone replaced him, the cattle appeared directionless and often got lost. The smartness became distant when others failed to organize the animals. He perchance ensured his superiority, if not deliberately, by this circumstantial exposure as a smarter grazier and herder.
After Grandfather chose not to attend to animals as he grew too old, the responsibility came to us. Our uncle replaced him for some time, albeit inefficiently, before he got washed off in a flood. After that, we curtailed the number of goats and came to the size mother could look after. We kids could only help during holidays. But whenever it came to us to lead the animals to the forest, we either tried to imitate Grandpa or found our own ways.
I am so willing to relive those precious years till 1991 when I was in the village. That’s when life was as carefree as that of the monkeys I came across, teased, and got teased by. I will be ungrateful to the cows, the oxen, the goats, the serpents, the wasps, the centipedes, and, yes, the baboons if I avoid giving them space in my write-ups someday. If life had not bestowed this opportunity to live immersed in the wild, it would probably have grown devoid of sensitivity (and sensibility) and made me wilder than baboons of Pashupati premises. I have no qualms to say that the path to professorship began following Grandpa and goats to the jungle beyond the Miklu River. It will make a long panegyric. I will need some good time to squeeze the strands of stories from the memory lane.
I wonder if this and later ramblings would mean anything to the broiler- and noodles-fed kids, including my offspring. But I won’t care. Let them have their share of texts if they have any and wish to script for their (arguably) uninterested-to-read progeny.
But I miss my grandparents acutely this evening on the occasion of their son’s eighty-ninth birthday.