The Esteemed Milkmen of Yesteryears

 

Those were very simple but careful days. People had their names etched on brass, steel and aluminum utensils. The neighbors usually borrowed kitchenware from each other during weddings. So the post-ceremony retrieval of the items required a strong, unquestionable identification mark. They would also get a tattoo of one’s name and village on the arms to give a clue to their identity if someone got lost at a fair. I remember a little boy who got lost at Haridwar fair. His misspelled village name got him transported to a far off village in some other state. He was lucky to be delivered finally after the failed attempt to deliver him at the wrong address.

Those were also the days when the milkmen served as paramours to lots of work-beaten and bored peasant women. In the privacy of the barn, the milkmen had the luck to stare at them as they milked the cows or buffalos. Romance bloomed usually, followed by boredom-killing intimacies. In the drudgery of a hard life, it was a handy diversion. In the pre-dawn darkness, inside the barn, there was a good chance that the milkman provided some succor to the work-beaten peasant woman. No wonder, the milkmen tried their best to collect milk from all barns before the day broke. As most of the villagers, the males at least, slept peacefully and the peasant women already in the yoke of domestic chores in the brahma muhurat, the milkmen loitered around with a mischievous glee on their faces.

One was Khome Dudhiya. Reddish, thin, his mongoose face always clean shaven, he moved with lots of business in his role of paramour to a few peasant women. His cream-colored shirt and pants were always ironed to notify his hard-edged intent. He bestowed a few allowances to his special friends of the opposite sex. Firstly, he deliberately allowed them to mix water in the milk. He just took long, joyful draughts at beedis and pretended not to look as water turned milk. Now this bumper offer was too big to be ignored by the peasant women. It gave them, and still does, an orgasmic sense of relief to mix water to milk. Next, he gave them maybe a rupee extra for per kg milk. And when he was really happy, he would gift them pieces of cotton clothes for sewing salwar kameez sets. In this simple way, he kept on ferrying milk in his iron drums on his bicycle. It was a very successful life. It is proven by the fact that he was never thrashed by any of the irate husbands on account of his romantic inclinations.

The younger crop of milkmen, who now supply milk to households in the nearby town, also have their share of fun. While the earlier generation had fun basically with the sellers, the stylish young milkmen of the present times have goody-goody times with the purchasers in the town. Many urban housewives also lead a suffocating life within the confines of four walls. The rotund young milkman, whom they consider to be carrying a bagful of libido because of his milk diet, comes handy to beat the boredom. These young Romeo milkmen, as they ride their bikes carrying milk drums, carry a boyfriendly look as if they are going on a date instead of selling their milk. In comparison to the milkmen of earlier generation, these flunky milk carriers have to follow the reversed equation in one more regard: as a special favor to their love interests, they supply waterless milk at subsidized rates.

A thin ribbon of wilderness

 

There is a monitor lizard in the neighborhood. There are little clumps of trees, grass and bushy plants to allow the reptiles maintain a foothold in the rapidly urbanizing landscape. The monitor lizard hatchlings resemble ghavera, vishphoda, a poisonous reptile in the lizard family, so people run to kill them. Card-playing idlers are at the forefront of this assault. It gives them a break from the mind-sapping focus in the card game.

Sometimes, a group of four or five ducks goes sullenly over the village. They already look like an extinct species because there aren’t any waterbodies to sustain their winter sojourn here in the plains. During good old days, the village pond rippled with their fluttering feathers and boisterous quacks. There was even a group of geese in the village pond. They appeared very peaceful and confident but at a spur of some tricky moment, they let loose a round of bassy quacking and seemed very angry. The dogs had their scary tales to share how angry these Donald ducks could become. The sturdy big ducks taught the dogs many lessons in good behavior. By the way, I remember clearly, they slept on one leg and turned their neck backwards to put it on the back for a soft feathery pillow.

The surrounding countryside is under intense agriculture, leaving hardly anything for the migratory winter birds from the Himalayas. To keep the hopes alive for the winged visitors, three white-necked storks still visit the countryside around the village. They have been visiting for the last many years, spending their time with hesitant little flights, measuring the vanishing wilderness with their long strides. They are always together. All three of them cannot be females because they would have gossiped to animosity by this time. They cannot be males also because they would have fought over females and fallen apart. It’s either a female with two males (polyandrous stork system) or a male with two females (polygamy, which seems more likely given the scourge of male chauvinism across species).

The Little-little Remains of a Day

 

Maybe after flying for many a fruitless mile, the honey buzzer has spotted the little honeycomb in our garden. In a world of vanishing flowers and rapidly decreasing honeycombs, it has a right to take a little bite of the thing that gives it a name. The attempt turns out to be very clumsy. The majestic honey-loving hawk is too big for the delicate branches of the small curry-leaf tree. The hunter has to grab its morsel while almost in flight. A bigger piece falls on the ground than what it takes away. But they don’t get sullen over such drops and misses. They are happy to take whatever falls in their kitty. The notion of getting more or something going waste doesn’t turn their head heavy. The honeybees struggle over the fallen piece. Instead of complaining over the loss, they use their energy to retrieve the grounded granules of honey. After a labor of one hour, they settle for almost the same shape as before. It’s so easy to move on with life if one doesn’t carry the extra load of grudges, guilt and anger.

The purple cone of banana flower hangs with silent, pinpointing precision. It’s heavy enough to tilt the stem and hangs down like a mason’s iron-cone used to check the vertical component of the wall under construction. It’s ideally, from our economical point of view, supposed to be taken off once the gap between the last row of the banana fingers and the flower cone is 15 cm because it sucks a lot of nutrition from the tree. But I keep it to enjoy the sheer joy of a dewdrop hanging from its tip in the mornings. Moreover, I have no business to temper with it when even the monkeys have spared it so far. They just pluck away the unripe little banana fingers unfolding on the upper part.

The purple pendulum of the banana blossom looks a nutritious heart-shaped tree chandelier. Dew drips down during the misty nights. The green little fingers above get into a sturdy claw. Many varieties of sucklers have a nice party during the day including mosquitoes, fruit flies, stinging wasps and the purple sunbird couple that is almost a full-term resident of the little garden. At dusks, a flying fox comes toed by smaller bats at night.

The night falls across a smoggy dusk. The evening twilight and a half moon doing justice to both the night and the day. It seems there is blood on the moon’s pale face, a kind of portrait of the bleeding nature. The reddish moon casts glum shadows across the smog. The smog is a regular affair now even in the villages during early winters.

But the worlds, big and small, have to lumber on. A caterpillar has lost its grater, the last bulbous part. It goes like a funny little tractor whose backside mudguards have been taken off. It walks pretty briskly, just that it topples over repeatedly after losing its anatomical symmetry. Accidents abound at this level of existence. But I think it’s better than getting crushed altogether. It has had a long day on the floor, doing all these antics, toppling over, lying calmly like a corpse for some time, an ant or two coming to check about the chance of a meal, and there it hops up again to keep claiming its right to life.  

A butterfly going for the last sips of nectar before calling for the day. A slumberous darkling beetle and an agile ant bump into each other. The day going for rest and the night getting up for its shadowy tasks. And above all the fears and insecurities, mother nature still trying to assuage the restless, aggrieved child:

‘Let me provide warmth for your frozen hands. Let me smile to soak your tears. Let me hold a flower for you to smell and smile. Let me hold light for your eyes even in the dark.’

Kori's Chronicles

 

We called him Kori but his real name was Vinod. His mother was from our village and he came visiting his maternal granny’s house during school vacations.

Those were slow-paced times. We got our lessons in animal care and kindness through simple norms and traditions. When stray female dogs in the streets gave birth to puppies, we would prepare nice little kennels for them using paddy haylofts. As the canine lady in labor rested, in the evenings we set out on a sort of alms-asking sortie on behalf of her. The group of children would hold an earthen pot, bowl or basin, little fingers holding the rim from all sides and there we went yelling in front of closed doors, raising a ruckus. People would offer chapattis, subzi, curd, buttermilk, millet khichdi and other rustic attempts at cooking a supper. All of it would be dumped in the same container to make it a heady cocktail of a canine supper. It would acquire a unique flavor as layers of different items entered the recipe.

Kori was involved in one such sortie. He loved bajra khichdi and buttermilk to along with it. It was a winter night. Those were the days when the streets were dark after the sunset and electricity arrived just in name, so most of the houses had candles and kerosene lamps. Kori must have felt very hungry. On top of that, his favorite dish was in the pot. He was draped in a shawl and in the dark helped himself with plenty of handfuls of buttermilk laced bajra khichdi. In fact, he chucked it out clean. So this part of the collective food went missing.

Standing in front of a door from where the incharge boy tilted the basin to check whether the collection was sufficient. To his puzzlement, the khichdi part of the canine supper was missing. It was pretty spooky and left us wondering about some ghost taking it away. We had a scary discussion about ghosts stealing bajra khichdi. Kori played a lead role in spreading the spooky tales about certain djins and prets who loved this food as his grandfather had told him.  

A few days later, having nicely digested the khichdi, but unable to digest the secret, Kori told me, on promise of keeping it a secret of course, that he had availed himself with that part because he liked it and we were late for dinner that day. Commendably, he had managed it very smartly, even though it was dark, from a basin that was held by many fingers.

Once, during some other summertime school break, he arrived at his granny’s place. Driven by his curiosity about his anatomy, he had an injured hung. So he couldn’t use his pants. He wore a lungi. Moreover, his rubber slippers went sailing down the village canal during one of the fun-bathing episodes, leaving him the option of wearing his maternal uncle’s leather boots that were double his size. In a lungi and double-sized black boots, he looked the kingpin of local goons. This, and his injured hung, gave him the walk of a teasing swag, a kind of flirtatious swaying gait. An old woman next door took it to her heart. He turned an eyesore to her and she cracked jibes at him. ‘He hardly has any legs in his bum but look at his attitude,’ she would say loudly whenever Kori passed her house.

With an injured pride, and injured hung, Kori resolved to take a revenge. He started relieving himself—in both solid and fluvial sense—on their own roof. When his granny found the roof turned into an open toilet, Kori pointed out the enemy old woman, saying he had seen her scaling the low parapet dividing their roofs and performing the relieving rites. But his granny cackled with laughter. Much concerned, Kori asked, ‘Why, you don’t believe me? Then whom do you suspect?’ ‘I don’t just suspect but I have full knowledge that it’s you. It’s a boy’s poop of your age beta,’ she spoke wisely. So the attempt at taking revenge failed.

A Monkey's Revenge against Humans

 

If your being isn’t bugged with ambition to a specific extent, the institutions, people, society, even your own family will find you weak and inefficient for their scheme. Satti Bhai, my cousin brother, is a clear example of this. He held a governmental job but had no hunger to rise in the ranks. During his youth, he loved mountaineering but the Himalayas lost their charm as drinking became his primary love in the evenings. He is a thorough gentleman in the art of drinking. Even after the alcohol’s chauvinistic liberality running in his veins, he is always at peace with one and all. As the bottle hits the bottom, he is a replica of some inclusionist, flexible, eclectic and absorptive God.

But then something happened that spoilt the equilibrium. I saw him losing his temper for the first time. It wasn’t after drinking. It was in broad daylight when his body was free of liquor. We were standing in a narrow, crowded old Delhi bazaar lane. Electric cables above, just a few feet above one’s head, crisscrossed the narrow space like thick creepers to give the sense of a false ceiling. Satti Bhai stood with a sense of aloofness and majestic muse about the futility of all this scurrying about, probably already looking up to the evening when his already slow world would become almost stand-still in the beautiful fog created by the bottle.

Then the leisurely strolling moments were checkmated. A monkey was kingly sitting on the electric cables, its legs dangling above Satti Bhai’s head. With an unbelievable ease, it peed on his head. As the warm fluid trickled down his crown, Satti Bhai couldn’t believe the attack on his sagely dignity. He yelled revengefully, baulked a terrible cuss word and jumped to hold the monkey’s tale to swing it and thrash it around. The offending rascal easily escaped leaving Satti Bhai out of words and fuming with rage.

Later, he took bath and shampooed his hair but, as he said, the bad smell won’t go. He got a terrible headache as well, which he said was due to the horrible chemicals in the simian pee. That evening, the bottle failed to sober him down for the first time. He was snappy, moody and argumentative. That was his initiation into after-drinking usual kind of revelry. He is capable of punching his co-drinkers these days. So primarily what happens to us can mould us into countless variants.