Milk was a bad idea
The enjoyment of a second chance
Like anywhere, living in the quaint but bustling mountaintop town of Kodaikanal comes with both its downsides and its perks. Today I’m going to focus on a perk that we truly enjoy- daily, fresh milk delivery.
Now I’m sure that many of you are familiar with the concept of fresh, home milk delivery, and I’d bet some of you even get it or have at one point. It’s funny to believe that this practice was commonplace not too many decades ago, in the Leave It To Beaver era, but was already long gone by The Brady Bunch era. Like a boomerang, trends seem to come back with a fervor in the United States if you wait long enough, but milk delivery in India never even left.
I guess if you get your groceries delivered to your house, then you could consider that milk delivery, but I’m talking fresh milk. Milk still warm from the cow that produced it. This is a treat we enjoy frequently throughout the day in our coffee, tea, and cereal. If you’re thinking of beautiful, glass bottles, aligned neatly in adorable wooden crates, stacked with care inside a cute white van, delivered by a gentleman in a tidy crisp outfit, then let me just reset your compass. Think less glass and more plastic, less wooden crate and more 20 liter petrol containers, less van and more motorbike. Do you have a different picture now? Perfect.
Our first milk man would come up the road on his motorbike with the same confidence Clint Eastwood would ride his noble steed into every dusty town he was about to save. Really the only difference between the two was instead of weather-worn leather saddlebags carrying a “Wanted” poster and some hard tack, our savior (of hot caffeinated beverages) had his iron stallion flanked with large plastic containers of 6% milk fat delight. Or so we thought.
Over the course of a month or so, Ravi and I started to notice that our once creamy and easily frothed beverages began to have more of a skim milk quality to them. What was happening? Maybe cows here go through metabolic stages that affect the cream content? Possibly it’s a seasonal issue? Or, as our driver, Charles, casually suggested, perhaps the milk is getting watered down.
Enter facepalm, shock, and denial. We were and still are very naive to the nuanced things that regularly happen in this community and are typically accepted. Was our milk man really watering down the milk? Was 2+2 ever going to equal 4 again? Ravi and I took our last watery sips of tea and decided right then and there that we wouldn’t stand for any further dilution of our ritualistic drinks. Pandora’s Box had been opened, and we weren’t going to pretend we didn’t see all those dark souls fleeing from it.
We immediately started buying milk from one of the small, local stores in town called Spencer’s. The milk comes in half-liter sized plastic pouches and has the viscosity of stove top pudding just as it begins to form a wake from the stirring spoon. Rich and totally deserving of mixing with our daily drinks. While we were excited to have our milk back to normal, there was a gentle longing for the convenience and simplicity of that morning delivery.
Thankfully, one week ago we began to have our milk delivered again, seemingly by a snow leopard, since I have yet to see or hear our elusive delivery person. The only evidence that they have been to the house is their signature calling card: a plastic water bottle of some sort (definitely not ours though) filled to the top with warm milk, waiting to be boiled on the stove. A thick layer of lightly-golden hued cream beneath the cap reassures us that the day’s tea and coffee will be rich and satisfying and totally worthy of Ron Burgundy’s walk of shame.
It’s also a helpful reminder to recycle because sometimes life’s greatest perks can come in someone else’s water bottle.