Cow hugs, ‘Valentines’ and Adam & Eve

 My Aatma-Nirbhar-Bharat celebrating Azadi-Ka-Amrit-Mahotsav barely missed pulling off another milestone on its fast and furious march to becoming Vishvaguru in the league of nations. We were headed for a fantabulous Valentine’s Day this 14^th, by celebrating it as the Cow Hug Day. For me, with no dearth of these divine bovines wandering around and some squatting on the roads and highways chewing cud, I was busy deciding how to take my pick; and mulling with what phrase to substitute “Will you be my Valentine” message for my chosen ‘Valentines’ … err … dear bovines, when I hug them. But no.  A sudden, silly afterthought in the corridors of power to withdraw the novel idea made my ambitious plans go kaput, depriving me of this godsend to purify my sin-stained soul and earn some virtue-points for my inevitable future appearance in the court of Almighty God.

Left to philosophise on the whiffs of free romantic air the Valentine’s Day suffuses in the present-day descendants of Adam and Eve defying imposed biases, my thoughts went back to the editorial in the Telegraph (31 December) on how biblical Eve’s aspirations to seek equality with Adam were scuttled by tempting her to eat the ‘forbidden fruit’ – the fruit of knowledge; how the status quo has since remained unaltered denying her a level playing field and a legitimate place of equality. Even the liberal Nordic countries - where women have better access to the fruits of freedom and equality - have not been able to bridge the gender gulf in some respects. If that is so, the plight of ‘Eve’ in conservative societies like ours hardly needs a word where politicians and ‘bhaktveers’ wearing cloaks of morality dictate our choices about food, wear (chaddies included!) and love & marriage. The status of ‘Woman’ mirrors the Happiness/Health Quotient of a family, society or country. And, goes the article, even the scientific findings that have been pouring down but not given much ear to by ‘Man’, have been saying so loud and clear.

To beg a question therefore, would our blue planet have been a more loveable and livable place had ‘Eve’ been at the helm, instead? The answer is a resounding YES, as gathering scientific evidence claims. Not only because they have higher emotional quotient, are more empathetic, and can ‘eye-read’ other people’s inner feelings and emotions with far more perspicacity than the hegemonic man. But even in matters -  considered to be man’s exclusive domains - women have proved their mettle and scored far better than men, and even during the Covid-19 pandemic the women leaders’ performance outdid that of the men.  In matters of ‘productivity’, ‘organizational skills’ and ‘crisis situations’, women, the evidence shows, are way better than their counterparts.

Therefore, Frailty, is indeed thy name: Woman?

No, not. To term Eve a weaker sex is a misnomer. Eve is a superior and super sex in more ways than one, and the editorial succinctly concludes, “Women should be made to mind the gardens of change.”

Thus, future beckons Eve and time calls for change. Given the life-threatening crises confronting the planet - wars, earthquakes, climate change, poverty, pandemics, the widening rich-poor divide - man needs to shed his hubris and let women be the world’s governing deities. Maybe that would make our unhappy Mother Earth smile again; make us smile too; and also make us celebrate our ‘Valentine’s Day(s)’ with zest and freedom; with a rose in hand and love in the heart … and leave our cows to merrily moo and chew their cud, undisturbed.

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