An American cow’s Indian dream
Living in India has made our encounters with cows and bulls rather commonplace. Almost everyone has a favourite story about their close brush with the sacred bovine while driving on roads, walking on footpaths, or just in the vicinity of the garbage dumps. Despite these close encounters, have any of us ever wondered how cows view us humans — engrossed in driving, honking, phones, and basically just ourselves.
An unexpected comic take on a cow’s life, her view of humans and their obsessions and her ensuing adventures by Hollywood actor David Duchovny, famous for his role as FBI special agent Fox Mulder in television show The X-Files, is an amusing read.
The coming of age book is written in a first-person narrative by Elsie Bovary, the happy milk cow with horns (at least on the book cover), who decides to flee to India from an upstate New York farm on discovering industrial meat farms. On her journey to safety in India, Elsie is accompanied by a pig called Shalom and Tom the turkey, who too are seeking safe havens in Israel and Turkey.
Elsie, who has opinion on just about everything, from end-of-the-chapter cliff-hangers to writing in screenplay form to pop culture and pitching the “memoir” to Hollywood producers, is emphatic in her opinions. “Most people think cows can’t think. Hello. Let me rephrase that, most people think cows can’t think, and have no feelings. Hello, again. I’m a cow, my name is Elsie, yes, I know. And that’s no bull,” she writes in her introduction.
”See what I did there? I left you on a poetic cliffhanger. And a chapter title again. Gives you a chance to take a break, maybe dog-ear a page, get something to eat, and when you come back the chapter heading will refocus you on the story. Like a Jedi, I tell you, a Jedi.”
The sheltered cow on the milk farm is happy providing milk for humans, but cannot get over the weirdness of humans having cow milk. “Humans love us. Or I thought so, we all thought so. They love our milk. Now personally, I think it’s a little weird to drink another animal’s milk. You don’t see me walking up to some human lady who just gave birth, saying, ‘Yo, can I get a taste?’ Weird, right? Not gonna happen. It’s kinda nasty. But that’s why you love us. The ol’ milk. Leche,”
Smart Elsie does not wait for the reader to make an inevitable comparison with George Orwell’s Animal Farm and blockbuster Hollywood film Babe, but jumps right in with references to allegories and talking animals.
Fifty-four-year-old Duchovny, who is launching his debut album Hell or High Water soon, first wrote his debut novel as a screenplay for an animated film. The English literature student from Princeton and Yale Universities revealed in a recent interview to The Guardian that he turned the screenplay into a novel when it was passed over by producers as it involved a Jewish pig in Israel.
Elsie, who wants Jennifer Lawrence to play her in a film, writes that her editor, who pitched the “memoir” as a children’s book, told her, “Sugar, there’s no way Hollywood will make a movie about a Jewish pig in Israel being stoned by Muslims. Too many hot buttons. Too niche. Too indie. We have to think tent pole. Not Sony Classics. Can’t the pig go to New York, you know, and meet a girl? Kind of like Babe meets My Big Fat Greek Wedding?”
An easy and quick read, the book subtly makes a statement about the treatment of farm animals and the voracious appetite of humans. “Humans will eat almost anything, if you put a little salt and butter on it. And butter is made from our milk, It makes me feel oddly complicit and guilty,” says Elsie. “Humans have to earn the right to be called animals again.”
By David Duchovny
Hachette India
pp. 209, Rs 399
( Source : sarju kaul )
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