Animal Alchemy

Graeme Wood, in a feature on Lalu Prasad Yadav’s achievements as India’s railways minister, writes:

When Lalu presented his latest budget to Parliament on February 13, he bragged, “Hathi ko cheetah bana diya” (“I have turned an elephant into a cheetah”). What’s his secret?

“Cow dung,” he says. “I have 350 cows, including bulls. Cow dung—no need of gas.”

A few paragraphs later, Wood quotes a civil servant named Sudhir Kumar as saying, “If there is money lying around, we can smell it.” I wish these quotes had been used out of context, they would have made India seem so delightfully exotic: a land where you apply cow dung on an elephant to turn it into a cheetah, and where natives can smell money. Sadly, Wood sticks to responsible journalism and does nothing of the kind.

Still, that cow dung bit isn’t quite explained…

(HT: Arun. Previous posts on cows: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31 , 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109.)