Jaya Jaya Sankara Hara Hara Sankara,

In what has been a grueling rescue that spanned across four days, by Sri Periyava’s grace, we managed to rescue 131 cows from Chettinad Govt. farm that was supposed be auctioned out as they were deemed non-productive by the farm.

Why do I call this a grueling rescue effort? First, the rescue operation started last Thursday when Cyclone Mandous was expected to hit Chennai and most parts of Tamizhnadu in full fury. However, with our heartfelt prayers to Periyava, miraculously, the cyclone did not arrive on Thursday which enabled us to board a good chunk of cows (77 of them) on Thursday and sent them off to Vellingiri Gosala, Coimbatore. Getting hold off the deeply scared cows running around helter skelter and loading them in several trucks (five of them) is one of the most tedious tasks in this world. It took around 4-5 hrs to catch all the 77 cows and then load them on the trucks. The travel time from Chettinad to Coimbatore took more than 20 hours with breaks in between for food and water for cows. Remember they are all a bit cramped in the truck and had to stand all the way for more than 20 hrs till they reach the Gosala. Sri Periyava held off the cyclone/rains till the cows reached Gosala after which it started pouring.

Once we off-boarded the trucks, the personnel had food, took a bit of rest and started back again to Chettinad farm to load the remaining 54 cows. By the time Cyclone Mandous moved to Chennai so there was hardly any rain in Chettinad, Karaikudi. Once again, the team had to go through several hours of excruciatingly painful process of catching the cows, loading them one one by one onto the truck and make them travel for another 20 +hrs to Gosala. The entire rescue operation which started last Thursday was completed this Monday evening.

All is well that ends well. Barring a few minor injuries all the cows are safe and secure and they are resting now in Gosala. The entire funding for this rescue effort was done by Gurukataksham Trust. With a couple of devotees help, we paid for the travel, fodder, labor, ropes, and other misc. expenses, which itself came to more than 4 lakhs.

All the personnel who was involved in this rescue efforts (including Viswanathan and myself) were pretty grounded by the time we got back home.

Posting a few pics and video clips so you can see how demanding and painful (especially for the cows) the rescue efforts are.

PS – Chettinad govt. farm is preparing another list of cows to be culled in the next three weeks so please continue to support our Gho Matha rescue mission so we can save those cows as well.

Sri Periyava Thiruvadi Sharanam
Rama Rama

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