Note: Jug Suraiya writes a regular column for the Times of India but this column of his was blocked by the newspaper’s censors and is being published by The Wire so that the wider public can see for themselves how Big Media in India censors itself.
With the change of regime in Bangladesh, New Delhi must think of ways of maintaining the cordial relationship that India enjoyed with its neighbour when Sheikh Hasina held office.
As a result of Bunny and I having visited Bangladesh in the 1980s, one thing — or rather two things — come to mind that might help in this regard.
Driving to the city from the airport we were struck by something odd. It took us a while to realise what the oddness was, or what the oddness wasn’t. There were no cows.
In Calcutta, where we then lived, there were cows aplenty in evidence, as in all Indian cities and towns. Wherever you looked, cows. On pavements, on roads, playing dodgem with passing cars, buses, lorries, and rickshaws.
But here there was nary a cow to be seen. Had the Bangladeshi authorities tucked them out of sight in anticipation of our arrival, the way Indian officialdom screens from view garbage heaps and construction rubble when VVIPs come calling? But Bunny and I weren’t VVIPs, or even Ips, so where were the missing cows?
We’d come to Dhaka at the behest of a college friend, a Dhaka tycoon, one of whose enterprises is involved in the import of milk powder from Switzerland. Bunny, who was copy chief of a multi-national ad agency in Calcutta, was filming a commercial for him, advertising the imported milk powder.
The next day we set off to have a look at the countryside. No cows. At a roadside stall in the boonies we stopped for tea, which the owner proudly made with imported milk powder. The cows in Bangladesh seemed to have disappeared, which was why my friend’s venture was so successful.
So unless the situation has dramatically changed, and Bangladesh has magically managed to make its disappeared cows reappear, we could send off to our neighbour some of our cows, which we have in abundance, wandering about the streets, ruminatively chewing plastic bags.
And to make sure that they too don’t disappear, we could also send along our own cowbhais, of whom we also have a superabundance, and let them do their rakshakking there.
Jug Suraiya is a well-known columnist and writer.
