Chapter XXV: The Calcutta Sacred Bull and His Twisted Tail

Did one of your old readers, kind friend (I think it was McGuffy's Second) way back in childhood days have a little poem in it all about a lot of little girls playing a wishing game? It's over forty years ago that I read that little poem, and I can only remember one little girl's wish.

She said: "I wish I were a flying fish, o'er ocean's sparkling waves to sail, a flying fish, that's what I wish, 'mid Neptune's blue to lave my tail."

Not having read that little poem for over forty years, and not having the book with me out here in Calcutta, I may not have quoted the lines verbatim, but as near as I can recall it, that's what she said.

That little girl didn't know what she was wishing for or she'd sooner have wished to be a devil bug.

The flying fish has got that old saying, "Between the devil and the deep sea," beaten to a frazzle.

The life of a flying fish may look all right to the unsophisticated, but things are rarely what they seem, and a flying fish's life is a hard lot.

Chased up out of the water to escape the jaws of some horrid sea monster seeking to make a meal off it, it spreads its silvery wings o'er "ocean's sparkling waves," when a seagull comes along, and--good-bye little flying fish.

Now if I'd been one of those little girls playing that wishing game and had known as much as I know now, I'd have wished to be a sacred bull here in Calcutta.

That's one fine job--the life of a Calcutta sacred bull.

I stepped out of my hotel today onto one of Calcutta's best streets, with a pavement twenty feet wide, filled with pedestrians, lined with splendid shops.

Calcutta is a town of one million inhabitants and is the second city in size in the British Empire.

Just at the side of the entrance to a fine jewelry store lay a great big fat and glossy sacred bull, with a garland of roses round his neck, placed there by some devout Hindu.

The natives would stop and fondle and brush the flies off him. Stopping to look at the novel sight, and giving the fine old fellow a few gentle strokes, I turned to my guide and asked him to tell the natives who had stopped to witness the foreigner's interest, to make the bull get up. I wanted to see what he would do.

A native pushed him in the flank and ribs, but Mr. Bull only smiled, and as plain as words his actions said, "No, thanks, I'm perfectly comfortable here."

"Twist his tail," I said; "that will start him."

The native gave his tail one twist. The bull looked around with a surprised air and anyone could see that he said, "That's a new kind of a caress," but he didn't get up.

"Twist it harder," I said.

Three turns of the tail brought him to his feet, and he walked leisurely along the crowded thoroughfare, perfectly at home, wearing his garland of roses as naturally as a girl would wear a string of beads, receiving a gentle pat from the native passersby--even an English girl put out her hand and gave him a stroke in passing.

He was a great big, glossy, docile pet, expecting and getting a wealth of love.

I am told that when he is hungry he goes to a green grocer's store and makes a meal off the grocer's cabbage, with no protest from the grocer, after which he goes to a confectioner's shop for a dessert--and gets it.

There are scores of sacred bulls in Calcutta. They have their special stamping ground. Let one bull poach on another one's preserve and there is a bullfight then and there. Not a Spanish "bullfight"--seven or eight trained athletes against one bull, with death for the bull a foregone conclusion--but a real, genuine, interesting bullfight, with the victor's tail in the air.

And it's a dull person who can't understand that that bull is saying to the vanquished one: "You stay where you belong. I'll do the sacred bull business around this neck of the woods."