I have received several emails from friends and relatives making derisive comments on a proposal by the RSS to market cow’s urine as a healthy substitute to coke and other drinks.

These guys –the RSS - claim that cow urine has medicinal value and it can cure most diseases ranging from cancer to diabetes—to mention only two scourges of mankind.

Decades ago we had a Prime minister who claimed that drinking his own urine had given what was his U.S.P—great health. It was true that Morarji Desai was a sprightly man even into his nineties. He walked and stood erect – a rarity in India politics these days. I have an I.A.S officer friend who told me that he had to travel extensively with Morarji bhai over all kinds of terrain and at the end of the day he - the IAS man - was totally tired out but Desai, who was more than twice his age, would be ready to pour into his flies for several hours thereafter.

In a well known incident the plane in which Desai was flying crashed into a farm. The pilot and other crew were alive but were too shocked to react. Desai quickly and quietly got up from the rubble and walked a mile to a nearby village to seek help for the crew! Morarji Desai attributed his lifelong peak health to drinking his own urine. I do not know how healthy cow urine is but I look at all this differently.

One often hears terms like alternate medicine, complementary medicine etc. To my mind use of such terms merely confuses issues There can be only two kinds of medicine – scientifically validated medicine and scientifically non-validated medicine. There are robust methods of testing whether something has medical value or not—this is called a double blind test.

A substance that is said to have curative value —like cow urine for example—has to be submitted to such a test and it has to stand detailed scrutiny. Till this is done it is all so much poppycock no matter what. We shall await the verdict of scientists. In any case we ought to give no credence to any claim that a particular medicine can cure many ailments.

By the way by sheer co-incidence I saw a programme this afternoon on Japan on a TV channel. I saw the anchor lick his fingers after tasting a dish. His eyes gleamed in delight, his face contorted into ecstasy and then he announced that what he was eating was the penis and scrotum of an animal. ’Heavenly’ he exulted. He ended with a triumphant statement—If it looks good eat it?’

In the other programme Anthony Bourdain dining in a restaurant in the U.S. tells us that the penis of a pig was the best dish he had had for a long time.

By this yardstick cow’s urine does not sound nauseating .Let’s raise a toast for the good time with RSS brand Pissky !
If it looks good drink it !
K.R.RAVI