It happened again in our household! After a long interval of over 20 years, a calf was born to a beautiful cow that had taken shelter by accident, in that I had not purchased it, nor had I ever dreamt of acquiring one.
The thozuthu (cattle shed) is as old as our household, over 100 years old but still in shape. In fact it has had such an aura that my predecessors had made it a point to bestow extra care to preserve the shed. It is a huge building, almost half the size of our ancestral home, and able to house a dozen cattle. It was built with teak and anjili, a fine example of 19th century Travancorian wooden architecture with a slanting conical roof, mukhapp vala and utharam. One would wonder why so much money and energy was spent on a cattle shed. But it speaks volumes of the relationship between man and domestic animals in the past.
The Vaastu pundits of yore, however, had their own calculations in relation to it. They say this structure is placed in such a direction that it is able to ward off all evil forces that may come towards the home. The thozhuthu and the home are situated face-to-face. It was also a resting place for birds and canines. Earlier, the presence of almost a dozen cattle was the pride as well as livelihood of ours. A cattle shed full of cows with one or two haystacks was a status symbol of a household then. Even alliances were determined taking these into account. But by the 80s the rhythm of rustic life had changed with a decadence of agriculture.
Some months ago, a distant relative residing nearby came with a plea to rent the cattle shed to rear cows. It was an astonishing proposal. One had never heard of renting cattle shed. He is a no-nonsense man, having spent over 25 years in the Gulf, and a recent returnee. He had earlier spent time in the vast meadows of Kuttanadu, the rice bowl of Kerala.
“It is lying idle here, brother. You can just give it to me for few months,” he asked nonchalantly. “It is meant to rear cattle, brother. It is your duty to allow cattle in. You have already converted part of it as a car shed.” That pricked my conscience. Rent or no rent, I was enchanted with the proposal and agreed to it. He brought four cows, paying around Rs 1 lakh and began rearing them. Within days the atmosphere was filled with the nostalgic sounds and smells of yesteryears. He was superb with his cattle. “We had two dozen cattle at Kuttanadu, including buffaloes. Our main source of income was from them,” he reminisced.
One among the cows was heavily pregnant. My relative had his own calculations on the expected date of delivery. Three days prior to the date predicted by the vets, around 5 o’clock in the morning, when the sun was almost rising, we heard the first cry. When we reached the thozhuthu we saw a healthy calf. Our neighbour was nursing the baby so much like a mother that we had to bow before him.