PRIMA DONNA
BREAKFAST FOLLOWED BYAMASSAGE, SOAK IN THE POND, PHOTOCALLS, FELICITATIONS AND VISITORS IN DROVES. ADAYIN THE LIFE OF FIVE- YEAR- OLD LAKSHMI, THE RS 25- LAKH DIVA OF HARYANA’S MURRAH BUFFALO CLUB.
It is just past 3 a. m. All of village Singhwa Khas in Haryana’s Hisar district is fast asleep. A narrow path leads uphill from the johad ( village pond), a massive pool mirroring the night sky, to a house that has a dim light on. Inside it, Vimla Devi is wide awake, preparing breakfast for her ‘ daughter’ Lakshmi.
This is their special private time together. Lakshmi is 10 months pregnant and Vimla is taking extra care with the meal— adding a generous dollop of
ghee to a blend of gram flour, wheat dalia, apples, banana, mustard husk, and a sprinkling of vitamin powder. “This gives her milk more cream and it flows thick and fast. It is good for the mother and good for the baby,” says Vimla as she serves bucketfuls of this breakfast mix to a prized five- year- old Murrah buffalo reared by her and her husband Kapoor Singh, 55. To call Lakshmi a mere buffalo is to call a Mercedes Benz a mere car. However, their price tags are not too dissimilar.
Lakshmi will be gone soon. Farmer and landlord Rajiv Sarpanch, from Hanuman Junction town in Andhra Pradesh, has bought her from Kapoor Singh for a price no bovine in the land has ever fetched before. The deal, sealed at Rs 25 lakh, has catapulted them all to pastoral celebrity. It has earned Singh a tenfold profit— he had paid his next- door neighbour Anil Kumar Rs 2.50 lakh for her two years ago. “Lakshmi has rained money on us since the day she stepped into our house, but who can put a price on the love we have for her,” says Singh, his eyes welling up at the thought of parting. A delighted Deepender Hooda, the Congress MP from Rohtak and son of Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, tweeted the sale: “Lakshmi, a Haryanavi Murrah Buffalo sold for record price of 25 Lakh :) ‘ Desha mey desh Haryana,
jit dudh dahi ka ho khana’!!” (‘ Country of countries Haryana, where there is milk and curd in every meal’).
TENDER LOVE AND CARE
Lakshmi’s skin is creamy to touch, much like the milk she is famous for, and her soft sheen makes the rich dark tone appear incandescent. “Sarson tel
ki maalish karte hain ( We massage her with mustard oil),” says Vimla, who spends the hour after breakfast rubbing in warm oil on the five- foot high and three- foot wide bovine weighing over 600 kg.
Lakshmi may be the biggest buffalo in the village, but she appears almost feline in the hands of Vimla, bending her neck, lifting her hooves, and moving her blonde- streaked tail. A lick and an involuntary moo tells Vimla that her baby is happy. In another month, an hour of milking will be added to the routine, yielding an estimated 30 creamy litres. But Vimla won’t be there. Someone else will be cooing to Lakshmi in Telugu at her new home more than 1,500 km away.
For over a week, as soon as the village woke up to its daily routine, hundreds of
visitors from across the state and beyond came by the carloads. Lakshmi, who knew they were drawn by her pageant- winning beauty, posed for them, turning this way and that. She let them touch her every now and then, but any rough handling and she made a sharp pirouette, leaving them staring at her ample posterior.
“This is the mark of a Murrah, a smaller head and a bigger body, and well- spaced udders,” says Dr Rajender Singh, a senior extension specialist in animal husbandry. “Lakshmi gave 22 litres of milk per day during her first lactation and then 28 litres per day during her second lactation. The third calving is next month and she can produce over 30 litres then,” he says. These are numbers that have made Lakshmi Singh’s lottery ticket.
“She was two when we got her. I sold her first male calf for Rs 3 lakh, but I didn’t want to sell her ever. Last year, Sarpanch offered to pay Rs 19 lakh for her and I said no,” Singh says, “I quoted Rs 25 lakh because I thought he would not agree, but he did. I had given him my word so there was no turning back for me. There is no price too high for a true connoisseur.”
A SEND- OFF LIKE NO OTHER
According to Singh, the middlemen cracked the deal on Sarpanch’s behalf in a day and the news spread faster than lightning. Word is that it was love at first sight for Sarpanch, who will now take Lakshmi to Hanuman Junction on the Krishna- West Godavari border in a special truck. “He will enter it next January in a cattle contest in Andhra Pradesh where the winner gets 1 kg gold for good looks and another for milk yield,” says Silagh Ram, one of the many well- versed in Lakshmi- lore. “She is sure to win.”
A vidai, or farewell ceremony, held on August 11 saw the 20- member Singh family play host to over 2,000 visitors. “We spent a few lakhs on the function. Our Lakshmi is priceless,” says Sushila Devi, 38, daughter of Kapoor Singh, who recalls that at her own wedding, there were only half the number of guests. Thousands of men in crisp kurta pajamas and high pagdis thundered down in SUVs, sedans and motorbikes for the party.
“It was bigger than a politician’s visit. It was a farewell lunch for the pride of our village,” says Lakshmi’s original owner Anil Kumar, 30. The menu was ghee- soaked vegetables,
rotis, rice, and rivers of creamy curd. As the village elders pass the hookah around and tell Singh that he will never be able to top this record, Lakshmi, bored at the scores of phone cameras in her face, hoofs down to the village pond, taking in the milling crowds from the water.
The Singh family got a necklace of dozen silver coins made for her as a parting gift. “She is blessed. I am sure she will bring luck to whoever she is with,” says Vimla, the caring mother who remembers to pack Lakshmi’s favourite treats— fist- sized balls of jaggery— in the truck for her long journey to a new home.