Kapila waits for her mate

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Our grandmothers and great grandmothers always followed a thumb rule while sowing seeds - planting them in twos. Meera Nair, a housewife, makes sure that all the animals in her tiny farm in the midst of the busy Poojappura area in the city are a pair, none having to deal with a lonely planet situation.Probably the only exception is the rare Kapila cow, which she got from a border town in Karnataka. This breed, which got its name from Kapila Rishi, is small in stature and not just its milk, but even the dung and the urine are supposed to be highly medicinal. Kapila itself is highly resistant to diseases and usually is not afflicted by fatal maladies."I had thought that I would get at least three from Karnataka, or at least a pair. But, unfortunately, I could get only one,’’ said Meera. "When we got her here, she initially went on a hunger strike. It took me over a week to get her to drink some water. Now, she feeds on the usual feed that we give to other cows,’’ Meera added.The Kapila cow at this little farm in Poojappura has a characteristically angular face with sagging folds of skin hanging down from her throat. While Meera’s Kapila is coffee brown coloured, a variant, the golden Kapila that comes with golden eyes, nose and golden skin, is supposed to produce what is called ‘go-rochana’ in its horns, which has high medicinal powers, says folklore. The cow is said to voluntarily shed its horn once a year.Getting a companion for the Kapila may still be possible, said Meera, but what seemed like a Herculean task for her was getting a pair of Vechur cows, the state’s own breed of small cows. ‘’It is a near impossible task to get these cows from Mannuthy. Besides, there are agents who jack up the prices,’’ said Meera.To make matters worse, the semen banks in and around the city do not usually supply the semen of Vechur cows, which makes breeding of these near-extinct species difficult.But Meera’s eyes do sparkle when she proudly says that she, however, did manage to get a Vechur pair in her cowshed - Paru, the cow and Velu, the bull. In this world of small cows is also the native Kasargod dwarf variety. But the small cows have no qualms about sharing the shed with the large brown Jersey cows and crosses between Jersey and Sindhi cows. And all of them listen to FM music!Once in a way, Meera sends her cows on a vacation to the family estate in Nagercoil. If they are not carrying and able to travel, that is. They are allowed to graze freely in the hills of the estate and the holiday ends with a lorry-ride back home.Meera’s fascination for all things small extends to goats and dogs as well. She has more than a dozen small Canadian goats at her farm, not to mention the pugs of Vodafone fame.All animals small co-exist with all animals big, in what is less than an acre of land. While the ducks and geese cackle at each other in what looks like a quarrel, Krishna, the kite refuses to claw even the smallest little chick on the farm. Just as the white furry Persian cats refrain from the temptation to grab a love bird. And the pugs, the labradors, the daschunds, the cows, the geese and the goats live happily together.