Delivering the Daily Doodh
The Washington Post
11-01-2003
Delivering the Daily Doodh
Byline: John Lancaster Washington Post Foreign Service
Column: THE WORLD AT WORK New Delhi
Nothing, not even a moody buffalo, is going to keep Dheer Singh from his
appointed rounds.
So when the big brown beast balks at giving milk, even after a hearty breakfast
of wheat fodder and ground cottonseed, Singh resorts to extreme measures.
His patience for sweet talk exhausted, he stabs the buffalo's neck with
a sedative-filled syringe, then watches approvingly as his 13-year-old
son, Yogesh, smacks it across the shoulder blades with a thick bamboo stave.
The milk begins to flow.
A few minutes later, Singh is weaving through early morning traffic on
his battered Bajaj motor scooter, another load of fresh, foamy and -- customer,
take note -- slightly watered-down buffalo milk sloshing in galvanized
cans suspended from the saddle.
Singh, 35, is a doodhwallah, or milkman, a symbol of Indian village life
that somehow manages to endure in this ever-expanding capital of 14 million
people. Like his grandfather and father, he earns his living as a daily,
door-to-door provider of doodh -- Hindi for milk -- to loyal customers
who regard packaged, pasteurized alternatives with a wine snob's disdain
for screw-top Bordeaux.
"My strength comes from buffalo's milk," says Singh, 35, a wiry, diminutive
father of three who supplements his milkman's income by working as a school
guard. "Children who have been drinking packaged milk, they will not have
this strength."
A member of the Gujjar caste, known for its expertise with livestock and
farming, Singh lives on the capital's southern outskirts in Fatehpur, once
an isolated rural settlement whose surrounding fields have all but disappeared
beneath a tide of urban sprawl.
He begins his day at 5:30 a.m., when he groggily makes his way from the
family sleeping quarters and into the courtyard of the ample one-story
dwelling he shares with his brother and his brother's family. Once, he
kept his buffalo in the nearby field he inherited from his father. But
like many of his neighbors, he sold his land to a real estate developer
several years ago, so his six remaining animals now spend their lives in
the courtyard, where they pass the night tethered to iron posts.
Outside, it is still pitch dark, the stars shining brightly above the open
courtyard, but the village has already begun to stir. The muezzin of a
nearby mosque has issued his morning call to prayer, and the village women
are busy sweeping floors, believing -- if they are Hindus -- that the gods
will smile on those who cleanse their homes of dirt before sunrise.
Even before Singh makes his first appearance, his wife, Birjesh, has been
hard at work for half an hour, scooping up the night's harvest of buffalo
dung with a woven basket. It will be formed into cakes and dried on the
roof for sale to neighbors as cooking fuel.
Singh squats next to one of the animals and cleans its udder with water.
Then he places two hands on the animal's rubbery teats and pumps them up
and down, squirting jets of warm, frothy milk into an aluminum pail. It
is a well-established ritual and no words pass between husband and wife;
while he tends to the buffalo, she brews tea in the family's simple, spotless
kitchen, which is separated from the animal pen by a low concrete wall.
After the buffalo have eaten -- and "the angry one," as Singh calls her,
has been medicated and beaten into making her daily contribution of milk
-- Singh methodically pours the contents of several pails into the cans
he will use to make his deliveries, then discreetly adds water to stretch
his supply.
Asked about this later, Singh says he adds only a quart of water to every
101/2 quarts of milk -- just enough, he says, to ensure that the cost of
fuel for his scooter does not erase the tiny profit he earns from each
sale. "People don't know the difference," he insists.
But he also offers a theological explanation for his doctoring. "We are
Gujjars and believe it is a sin to boil milk straight from the buffalo,"
he says, asserting that in the Hindu pantheon of deities, "milk is also
a god" and that dilution with water before boiling removes the potential
for any offense.
It's 7:15 a.m. With his head swathed in a woolen scarf, Singh straddles
his scooter with its load of cans -- four slung from the saddle, one precariously
balanced on the footboard -- and sputters through the narrow lanes of Fatehpur.
Passing a row of squatters' shacks, he accelerates onto a main road, now
filling up with diesel trucks, commuter buses, bicycles and the ubiquitous
motorized three-wheelers known as autorickshaws.
He makes his way to a neighboring settlement and parks in an alley outside
the home of Om Prakash, 62, a retired schoolteacher who comes to the door
in bare feet and powder-blue boxer shorts. The two greet each other warmly;
Singh was once one of his students.
As Singh ladles out four liters, Prakash reflects on the superiority of
buffalo's milk over the "synthetic" stuff sold in stores.
"I have read in the paper that they mix detergent powder in it to make
it whiter," he says of the latter.
A neighbor, who is also one of Singh's customers, offers her assent. "Buffalo's
milk is much better because of the food the buffaloes eat," says Om Vati,
50, who shuffles down a flight of stairs in a flowered tunic and slippers.
"This milk gives me strength." But when Singh is out of earshot, she adds,
"Sometimes I do feel he puts in too much water."
Singh continues his rounds. Often the scrape of his metal can on a concrete
stoop is enough to bring his customers to the door. He takes no money,
as the customers settle their bills at the end of each month. Most seem
glad to see him.
"They think of me as a brother," he says after finishing his daily rounds
-- 25 deliveries in all -- returning home in little more than an hour.
"I have never done anything to earn their distrust."
Keywords: INT
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