This story dates back to 2017. That’s when Ekta Saini’s parents got her the first Bir cow. Saini’s affection for the cow soon blossomed into a passion and in 2019 she started an Insta account to document her bovine love.
Today, Saini, is a social media influencer with 121K followers on her primary account. She says one of the key driving factors behind the popular content that she creates is to spread the word about the prevention of animal cruelty.
“Prior to that, everyone in Rajasthan’s Sikar district had cows only for milking purposes. It was my cow Gauri who made me realise that using a cow as a commodity isn’t a good thing. I grew very attached to her and seva (service) to cows became a part of my nature,” admits Saini, who grew up in the urban part of Sikar but shifted to her ancestral village Kanwarpura during the lockdown.
A lot of her content on both her Instagram accounts (the second one is called Gauri Villa) shows Saini bonding with her cows and calves, and she says such visuals stir something in many members of her audience who, like her, have their roots in rural India.
Bovine besties
Saini passed out from Sikar’s Vidya Ashram Global School during the Covid-induced lockdown, in 2020. Soon after she shifted to the village with her family and Gauri.
Saini admits that Gauri had a profound impact on her and changed her views on how to relate to bovine creatures. Today, the family has a total of 15 cows that they care for, and Saini documents a lot of her interactions with her cows on Instagram.
“Our guru, Gopalananda Saraswati ji, is also the inspiration behind our service towards cows. My parents happened to attend one of his kathas (discourses) where he spoke about gau-seva. Now we keep the cows we have for the love of it,” reveals Saini, who also believes that using some of the milk of the cow, or its dung, isn’t a bad thing as long as there’s no cruelty involved.
“In the future, we plan to expand the number of cows in our care to 100 or 150. At that point, we will have to part with the milk and dung of these cows and may have to start selling them commercially,” says Saini.
“Even now, many people DM me requesting to make ghee (clarified butter) for them in exchange for vast sums of money, but I refuse. These people have seen us on social media, taking good care of our cows. The demand for cruelty-free cow products has been steadily growing. I am really glad to see people becoming more aware of the bad practices prevalent in the milk industry, and are demanding ethically sourced milk and milk products,” explains Saini.
Philanthropy and social responsibility
Saini, who started her first Instagram account on 23 June 2022 on a whim, is a part of the Dawa Devi and Dana Devi foundation. The former offers free medicines to NGOs working for cow welfare and the latter provides free fodder for cows to those in this line of service. The goal is to get a total of one crore volunteers to join the two foundations.
Beyond the serious work she does for cows, Saini is a carefree youngster who enjoys the slow life on her farm in her village. She documents other enviable practices like making farm-fresh food for her family, procuring honey and making fresh cheese (paneer) among other things. “The paneer making IG post was my most popular one by far. It got me 100K followers on Instagram and 26 million views,” she shares excitedly.
Saini attributes her success as a social media influencer to the fact that her content captures the slow life. “Most people in cities either envy this lifestyle or lived it once themselves as children,” she says. “I think this kind of content whips up a lot of nostalgia in my viewers,” she contends.
For her, the monetary aspect of being a social media influencer comes second to the love of putting up meaningful content. “I’m also very choosy about the brands I endorse through my primary account (the Gauri Villa one being purely an educational account). I never partner with any brand that can be construed as being cruel to animals. I like being socially responsible in my choice of collaboration and content,” says Saini, who also runs a peanut butter business.
The lead image on top shows Instagram influencer Ekta Saini, who has 121,000 followers on her personal Instagram account and lives in Sikar, Rajasthan. (Photo courtesy Ekta Saini)
Smriti Mukerji is a Delhi-based freelance journalist.
