Milk

A Jain stranger named Maulik
tells me he loves to drink milk,
says it's part of their culture
that they get sustenance
from their mother, the cow.

In a theory, people say the cow
turned into a hundred different deities
when men picked mushrooms from its dung
and ate them. It was a trap door
to higher realms where physical reality
collapsed, and from its ruins
raised the spirit of all things,
in trippy colors. Thus came the story
of the cow. As is the story of religion.

But I didn't tell him this;
he might get insulted by where religion
rose from. Neither did I tell him
how milk is made: how mother
cows are caged in tight, rusty cells,
are raped without their knowing,
impregnated indefinitely,
to bear milk for human consumption,
while milkmen throw its young
on some rich man's plate.
And while cows last some 20 years,
mother cows last only four,
their bodies completely spent
from multiple rapes, pregnancies,
conceptions, and production
of thousands of gallons of milk.

But I don't tell him this;
for almost all wars since time immemorial
sprung from the collision of belief systems.
People don't ever shake off the boxes
they were born and raised into.
They never see through the eyes of their neighbors.
What more feel what it is like
to slip in the bones of their enemies.

The day that I didn't speak my mind
was a day I had a friend,
and I wasn't so lonely.

// 19 Jul 2017