Display Ad in Beijing, Depicting Cow,
Confuses a Hindu
By M.P. Prabhakaran
It was April, 2002. I was part of a nine-member group from the United States that was on a 10-day tour of China. As we came out of the Beijing airport terminal, I noisily inhaled the air, inviting the attention of others in the group. I told them that I was doing in style my first smelling of China. They laughed. I also told them that that was my way of proclaiming to the world that a dream I cherished from childhood, of being in the mythical land of China one day, had at long last materialized. The thrill I felt was oozing out of every pore in my body.
I continued to feel that thrill all through the bus ride from the airport to the hotel. The pleasant disposition of the tour guide, who received us at the airport, made me forget the tedium of the 12-hour flight from Los Angeles to Beijing. She was pretty, in her twenties, and always had a winning smile. Before we reached the hotel, she let it be known to us that she was married. “I get the message,” I told her. “But couldn't you have waited at least until this tour was over?” I asked. She blushed.
“Um, you are quite a player, eh,” Phoebe, one of the nine members of our group, said, with a nudge. [Correction: Actually, there were 10 members in the group. In hindsight, it was wrong for me to count Walter out because he stayed in the hotel most of the time. He used a walker to get around. The only reason why he decided to come on this tour was that his wife Dorothy, who was able to get around without a walker, wouldn't do it alone. Having satisfied their wanderlust together all their married life, they didn't want to make this an exception. Both were in their late seventies. Whenever I saw them together, I saw them holding hands. Walter also sang now and then. And he sang beautifully. “If they are this romantic at this stage, what a wonderful time they might have had in their courting days,” I remember saying to others in the group.]
After a good night’s sleep, I woke up and looked out the window of my hotel room. The bright morning sun had already lit up the tree-lined street outside. Ideal for a morning walk, I said to myself and got out of the room.
Spring Flowers in Full Bloom
It was spring in Beijing and the air was crisp. Spring flowers were in full bloom all around. I once again saw the City Flowers and City Trees of Beijing our tour guide had introduced us to the previous day. The former were the Chinese rose and chrysanthemum and the latter the Scholar Tree and pine.
A casual look at the other morning strollers made me aware that I was the only Indian on the street at that time. I became more conscious of it when some of the passersby, all of whom looked Chinese to me, stared at me. But the stares in no way diminished the joy I felt on my first morning walk in China.
I was taking in the beauty of everything around when a huge billboard at a distance caught my eye. Embossed on the billboard was the picture of a beautiful cow. It roused my curiosity. “Could it be a pointer to a Hindu temple below?” “Is the billboard an advertisement for a dairy farm?” “Did Hare Krishna people come and set up a temple in Beijing also?” [Their temples are always dedicated to Lord Krishna and in their minds, and in Hindu mythology, Krishna and the cow are inseparable.] Questions like these crossed my mind as I walked toward the billboard.
I was still at a distance, not in a position to make out what the building below the billboard was about. My curiosity gave place to confusion when I saw a group of men and women, who had just alighted from a tour bus that stopped near the billboard and who looked Muslim in appearance, walk toward it. Muslims visiting a Hindu temple is a rarity, unless that temple is a great tourist attraction. And the guidebook I had on Beijing has no mention of such a thing. Which meant that I had to dispel the notion of the billboard’s being an indicator of a Hindu temple nearby.
“In what way could these Muslim tourists be attracted to that beautiful cow on the billboard?” I asked myself. I didn't have to wait for long to find the answer. In a few seconds I found myself standing below the billboard, in front of the restaurant it referred to. The name of the restaurant: Xin Jiang Muslim Restaurant.
I felt slightly taken in. Looking at the billboard, I said to myself: “Who in the world would think that a cow this beautiful would end up on a plate in a restaurant?” “But then,” I countered it with another question, “how on earth can a cow-eater like me say such a thing?”
The question and counter-question represent the rare moments of conflict I have in my life between the Hindu that I was christened and raised as and the cow-eating Hindu that I later became. Every time the conflict arises, I resolve it this way: A remarkable thing about Hinduism is that its tent is big enough to accommodate both the cow-worshiping Hindu and the cow-eating Hindu.
[Published on July 19, 2004.]
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