Animals and India

Today we took a ride with these poor elephants up to the Amber Palace (it is the thing to do when you have two kids and it's hot). I realized that the top trunks of all these elephants have a white dotted spot of different shapes and sometimes also some part of the ears. Now I am intrigued, so I asked our guide, very casually he tells me they are bleached so that they can paint over the white spot for the festivities. In fact I see some elephants painted, probably the ones that were just returning from some celebration. I have no idea what does it do to an elephant but I doubt it is pain free. The incredible part is that those same people feed the ants and the pigeons for good karma! The water buffaloes are used for work but not the cows, the cows and the goats steal the pigeons food that people put in specific places. The monkeys are also sacred because there is a Godmonkey, so to get rid of them in urban area they introduce a black monkey that terrorizes the others. It is a human-animal chain of sharing, taking, borrowing, the concept of individuality has a very fluid form. For example I ask our driver if small farmers get together in cooperative, he said: Well no but they help each other! What the hell they need a formal cooperative for? (That's what I am thinking, he would never express himself that way)