கறவைக் காலத்தில் கோவுக்கு நாம் தருகிற போஷாக்கை விட கோவினால் நாம் பெறுகிற போஷிப்பு அதிகமாகும். கறவை நின்ற பிறகும் அந்த நன்றி நமக்கு மறக்கவே கூடாது. அதனால் கோவுக்கு ஆயுள் உள்ளவரையில் அதை ரக்ஷிக்க வேண்டும். கறவை மாடுகளுக்கு மட்டுமில்லாமல் மறுத்துப் போனவற்றுக்கும் பாதுகாப்புத் தர இப்போது எங்கேயோ சில இடங்களில் மட்டுமுள்ள கோசாலைகளும், பசு மடங்களும், பிஞ்ஜராபோல்களும் பலமடங்கு விருத்தியாக வேண்டும். இதற்காகச் செய்கிற செலவு முழுதும் புண்ய வரவேயாகுமாதலால் அனைவரும் தயங்காமல் தங்கள் பொருளையும், பொருளோடு உழைப்பு, கவனிப்பு ஆகியவற்றையும் இதற்காகத் தாராளமாகக் கொடுக்க முன்வரவேண்டும். இந்த தேசத்தின் புராதனமான கலாசாரத்தில் ஊறி வந்துள்ள கோரக்ஷண தர்மம் நம் ரத்தத்தில் பேச வேண்டும். அப்படிப் பேசி, ஒரு பசு கன்றுக்கு ஊட்டுக் கொடுப்பதற்கு எப்படித் துடித்துக் கொண்டு போகிறதோ அந்தத் துடிப்புடன் நாம் கோஸம்ரக்ஷணையில் முனைய வேண்டும். – ஜகத்குரு ஸ்ரீ சந்திரசேகரேந்திர சரஸ்வதி ஸ்வாமிகள்
During the yielding period of the cow, the nourishment that it offers is more than what we give to it. That gratitude should always be there even after it stops yielding milk. So we should protect the cow as long as it lives. Not only for the yielding cows but also for the protection of unyielding cows too there should be an increase in the number of cow sheds, Pasu matams and Pinjrapols which are presently few in number. What we spend for this purpose is only an investment in the form of Punya and so we should come forward to donate liberally both money as well as physical help without any hesitation. The Gho Rakshana Dharma that has been embedded in this nation’s ancient culture should speak in our blood. Speaking that way it should make us get involved in cow protection with the same zeal as that of a cow which would run to feed its hungry calf. – Jagadguru Chandrasekharendra Saraswathy Swamigal
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Jaya Jaya Sankara Hara Hara Sankara – In a totally unprecedented rescue effort that I have been involved in nor seen anyone involve, by Sri Periyava’s grace, managed to save 161 cows from the Melmalayanur cattle market yesterday. Three weeks back, I had mentioned about one of the rescue efforts from the same market where we could save around 20 and lost around 150 (Read HERE). This time, for once, we were the dominant force controlling and influencing the market in full throttle that we took more than 80% of the cows that came to the slaughter section of the cattle market. The locals said they have not seen anything happen like this before in this market.
Let me step back and detail it out a bit. After the last time disappointment of letting so many cows scooted away into a closed Kerala truck right in front of our eyes we were determined to save as many possible this time. We started planning for this operation several days ahead and withdrew cash in many lakhs so we are not scampering for funds at the market in the last minute. Also, the Tuesday night before we left, the funds were sorted into various denominations so it could be disbursed easily to the sellers in the market (online transfer/GPay/BHIM, etc. have their own limitations and constraints in various ways that cash transactions are the best way to deal in cattle markets). Given the magnitude of the rescue operation, we had a couple of kind hearted volunteers join us as we needed a lot of help physically to take care of several errands.
As Chennaites may be aware, rain was pouring down from Tue. morning and I was wondering if the market will happen. I called our local contact in Melmalayanur who said, come what may the market will happen (he was dead right, the market happened in full capacity even in heavy rains); Goes to show the attitude of the people and their total disregard for cows and calves and the desire for cheap money (how cows/calves will survive the heavy rain, slippers slushes, transport, etc. never seemed to be thought out).
The drive to Melmalayanur from Chennai is little over 3 hrs so we had to be there before start time so we could buy as many cows as we can. Viswanathan, myself, Shri Vignesh, and Shri Karthik started off to the cattle market @ 11 PM Tuesday night (Jan 5) reached Melmalayanur around 3AM and had a chat on the go forward plan with the local contact in his place. We had already strategized on what we need to do and how we go about it. The market opens at 4 AM every Wednesday when the local and nearby villagers hop over with their cows/calves for sale. We were in the market around 4 AM and took our respective positions. Karthik and Vignesh to stand in the rescued cows area to keep tab on all our rescued cows that were bought and tied up, and take picture of each of them. Viswanathan sitting in the car and disbursing cash; myself and the local contact navigating through the market, negotiate and buy the cows, issue them a token for the purchase. The buyer would take the token to our car, give it to Viswanathan and will get the funds disbursed along with jotting down the sale details.
We got off to a blistering start where we purchased more than 50 cows in little over an hour meaning 1 cow was purchased every minute. Seeing our spree, the sellers and brokers started thronging us and the intensity picked up rapidly. Remember it was still pitch dark at this time. By dawn we had purchased around 100 cows. Such has been the pace and impact that many sellers and brokers heard about us and rushed towards us to sell their cows. Perhaps the influencing factor being, since we told the cows are going to be sent to a temple (since most of them are not aware of the term Ghosala) it may have played a part as well. After dawn, navigated our way to the other side of the cattle market to check on cows with very young calves that are at the risk of getting separated. To my surprise, though it was heavily raining and the grounds very slushy, the cattle market was heavily crowded with cows and just born calves standing in rain. Found a few calves that were just born or couple of days old. Bought them, came back to the slaughter section and found more sellers and purchased cows/calves from them as well. All these were happening amidst heavy incessant rains which was testing us in many ways. The highlights of our rescue were:
1. One small female calf with three legs and about to be boarded in a slaughter house truck.
2. Eight small calves that are still feeding with their mothers were separated and came to market for slaughter. It was purchased from a Muslim butcher.
3. Around 20 small and medium size calves; purchased all the small calves that came for up for sale
4. One cow that went inside a slaughter house truck and came back to us after negotiations.
5. The greatest highlight of all is, a cramped truck full of 37 cows that was completely on-boarded to go to Kerala was purchased from the Kerala cow dealer. We did not off board the cows but had the truck go to Gosala instead of Kerala.
Though the cattle market closes around 10 AM we had to triage, strategize and get all of our cows loaded in eight trucks. Cows/Calves that are either too small, weak, heavily pregnant have been kept with our local contact in Melmalayanur. The rest were boarded one by one.
As Periyava says, nothing in life is hunky dory. There is always a low light in everything we do. As many as seven calves died and a cow passed away as they could not withstand the travel to Vellingiri Gosala in Coimbatore (12 hrs drive from Melmalayanur). Remember they were also hungry from the prior night so hunger is another contributing factor as well. More than the hunger and travel they were all completely drenched in rain for the entire day yesterday and also during travel as rains did not relent. We could arrange a tarpaulin cover for a truck carrying 10 small calves but not for the others due to various logistical issues, the foremost being the sheer number of cows. By the time we were done it was around 4.30 PM which means we spent 12 hours straight in the market.
All of the remaining cows have reached safely to Vellingiri Gosala few hours back where they were given food and water as soon as they arrived. I just spoke to the truck driver who offloaded the cows and they said all of them are doing well. While we had to endure some pains like lack of bathroom facilities (shower and loo), lack of food/sleep, long drives, etc. the struggles that the cows and calves go through are far more greater. Not only they are dragged in front of strangers in pouring rains and slush for sale they would also be ruthlessly thrown inside slaughterhouse trucks (if they unfortunately end up on the other side of the fence).
At the end of it all, there was one telling comment the Kerala trucker driver (Siddique) made. With this heavy purchase the price of beef in Kerala will go up for a few days (in certain parts). In my opinion, this is a significant accomplishment. While the end objective is to abolish beef and ban cow slaughter we just cannot afford to let the status quo continue as it is. We need to make life tough for all these guys in more than one way.
As I have been saying repeatedly, all of these rescue efforts are happening due to two reasons:
1. Periyava’s Anugraham and
2. All of your consistent financial contributions
Please keep spreading the word so more people join in our rescue efforts. This is the only way I see a fix to this temporarily (the permanent solution being people’s attitude and mindset regarding Gho Matha and beef should change). It does not matter whether he/she is an Periyava devotee/Sanatana Dharmik or not. As Periyava says, Jeeva Karunyam is common to mankind and spans across religions. The upside of population explosion is more people can come forward and contribute to these great causes which will help us save a lot more cows. Just like we managed to influence the Melmalayannur cattle market yesterday we can control many cattle markets if we all come together. We will continue to put in all our efforts and will sincerely pray to Periyava for that to happen so not even one cow goes for slaughter which Periyava desired in Deivathin Kural.
Very grateful for some of the donors who had contributed magnanimously (in lakhs) with which we can save all these innocent souls.
Many Jaya Jaya Sankara to Shri K. Natarajan, Smt. Amudha Aravindh, Shri Rajashekhar Borra, Shri. Balaji Hariharan, Shri Shri. Murali Sivaraman, Shri Srivathsan, Smt. Soundarya, Shri. M Srinivasan, Smt. Sujatha, Shri Murali Sampath, Shri Murali Krishnamurthy, Shri Lakshman Gurazada, Shri. Sarveswara Rao Geddam, Smt. Radhika Kannan, Smt. Chandra, Shri Aditya Raghunath, Shri. R Venkatesan, Shri R Subramanian, Shri Anantharaman, Shri. Veerabhadra Rao, Shri. Raghuraman, Shri Guruprasad Ramdass, Shri Jayaraman, Shri T Balaji, Shri Ravichandran, Smt. B Padmavathi, Shri Markandeyulu Garimella, Shri Babu Dhandapani, Shri N Ramprasad, Shri. B Srinivasan, Smt. Sandhya NS, Shri V Neelakantan, Shri KR Natarajan, Shri Venkat Rajan, Shri L Srinivasan, Shri Sivakumar Jayaraman, Shri D Ramesh, Shri Ganesan Sivakumar, Shri Srinivasan, Shri Shri Natarajan Sridharan, Shri. Sriman Narayan, Smt. PR Ranganayaki, Shri. TK Subramanian, Shri. Vasudevan VK, Shri Karthik Jayaraman, Shri Prakash Kumar, Shri Narayana Sarma Hariharan, Shri Pattabiraman, Shri. Swaminathan, Smt. Shobana, Shri S. Krithivasan, Smt. Sangeetha Srinivasan, Shri. Ramanathan Ramakrishna, Shri. V Murali, Smt. Umamaheswari Nandakumar, Shri Gopalakrishnan Sowmya, Smt. Deepa Rangarajan, Shri Raghuraman, Smt. Rajeswari Sunderraman, Shri B Gopalaswamy, Shri. Ganesh babu, Shri. Rajeshwari Sunde, Shri. Venkataraman K, Shri. Aditya Raghunath, Shri. Bala Ganesh, Shri. R. Ganesh, Shri. C Ganeshbabu, Shri. SK Srinivasan, Smt. Anuradha, Smt. Subra Sundaram, Shri Venkatraman Srinivasan, Shri Ramaswamy Saishankar, Shri G Ramachandran, Shri Raghavan R, Shri. Shankar, Shri Ramkumar Vaidyanathan, Shri. Aswath Narayanan, Smt. Krithika Viswanathan, Shri J Ravi, Shri. Ramnath Venkatraman, Shri Ramkumar Vaidyanathan, Smt. R Preethi, Smt. Sowmya, Shri Sankar Balakrishnan, Shri S. Ramakrishnan, Smt. V Usha, Shri. V Balasubramanian, Shri. Swaminathan, Smt. R. Supreetha, Smt. R. Supreetha, Shri T Sudhakar, Shri. Subramanian Muthu, Shri R Ramachandran, Shri Lakshman, Smt. Rama Chandrakantan, Shri Gopinath Viswanathan, Shri Venkaraman, Smt. Reshma Bharadwaj, Shri B Sridhar, Shri Swaminathan Sekar, Shri Narayanan Vaidyanathan, Shri. Balasubramanian, Smt. Jayalakshmi Natarajan, Singapore Sathsang, Smt. PV Jayanthi, Singapore Sathsang, Shri Seetharman, Shri Kannan Krishnan, Smt. Malathi Subramainam, Shri Balakumar, Shri. PVS Krishnan, Shri. Narayanan, Shri Venkatraman Thiyagarajan, Smt. B Meena, Smt Anu Ravi, Shri Aravind Srivatsan, Shri Manikandan, Smt. T Srividya, Smt. Usha Sampath, Smt Radha Hariharan, Smt. Anuradha, Shri Balasubramanian, Shri.Manikantan Srinivasan, Shri. Gopalakrishnan Rajara, Shri Chandrakumar VR. Shri. Avula Bhuvan Reddy, Shri Balaji Rajamani, Shri PS Krishnamurthy, Shri N Sridhar, Shri Ganesh Sankaranaryanan, Shri Ramji Ramaswamy, Shri G Balasubramanian, Shri Sundararajan P, Shri Viswanath Harith, Shri. Ravichandran, Shri. Srikumaran, Smt. A. Vaishnavi, Smt. Alamelu Shri Sundaram, Shri Jagadees Chenchu, Shri Avula Bhuvan Reddy, Shri P Sudhakar, Shri VB Sambamurthy, Smt. Shilpa Somashekar, Shri. Ajit Padmanabhan, Shri. Nuthanapati Raje, Shri Srikrishnan Natarajan, Smt. Shilpa Somashekar, Shri Krishna Vishwanathan, Shri. N Narahari, Shri. Vijay Shankar,Shri. Vibhanshu Jain Smt. Shobhana Viswanathan, Smt. S Indira, Smt. Anuradha Chavali, Shri Ashwin Rajiv, Smt. Vidya Arjun, Shri. Badrinarayanan, Shri Ramanathan S, Smt. Aparna, Shri Sivaramakrishnan S, Shri K Achuthanandam, Smt. Sridevi Raghavan, Shri Ramji, Shri K Raghu, Smt. Jayanthi Ramesh, Smt. Lakshmi Rao, Smt. Meera Krishnan, Smt Rajalakshmi, Smt. Chitra Sudarshan, Shri. Deepak Ram, Shri Vikram Lakshmanan, Shri. L Srinivasan, Smt. Jayshree Ramesh, Shri Narayanan, Smt. Annapoorna Vaitheeswaran, Shri. Bhaskaran Ramachandran, Smt. Rama K, Shri PS Balaji, Smt. Uma Maheswaran, Smt. Radha Sabapathy for their kind contributions in helping with this rescue efforts, transport, and maintenance.
HERE are the account details for contributing to our cow rescue efforts.
I’m posting some of the key video clips and pictures that was taken from the market yesterday. All these are definitely a must see for gaining awareness on what is happening around us and also sharing with likeminded folks.
Sri Periyava Thiruvadi Sharanam.
Rama Rama
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Cows arriving for sale in Cattle market. As I had mentioned above, the market is divided into two sections. One section exclusively for the sale of non milking, old, sick cows and young calves separated from their mothers. In these video clips you could see how soggy and slushy the place is.
Crazy scenes at Melmalayanur cattle market early in the morning around 4.30 AM.
Small Calves with a Muslim butcher. Though all of them are small you can see a very small baby in black colour that would be around a month old
A Small Calf with only three legs hopping around the market that we got from the butcher
This cow seen below has been offloaded from the slaughter house truck after they boarded her.
Native breed farming/ploughing rishabams who had done enormous service to mankind was offboarded from Kerala truck
Just born calves with their mothers standing in heavily crowded cattle market ready to be sold/separated.
All the rescued small calves onboarded into our truck. All of them are less than six months old
A glorious sight – All the 70 odd cows that you see in these videos were rescued by us and tied in one part of the cattle market. A few locals remarked that they would have ended up on the side of the market (butchers) had we not bought them.
We employed eight trucks to carried all our rescued cows to travel to Vellingiri Gosala, Coimbatore. You could see all the cows getting onboarded below.
