Happy Childhood Days – PART II

One of the everyday rituals that we never got tired of watching during our holidays at our home town, was the milking of cows by Rayar Uncle. Morning he came too early for us to watch the ordeal. By the time we woke up, the milk would have been collected and ready to be given to the guy who came from the milk society. The surplus milk, after procuring enough for consumption for all the members in our house, would be given to the milk society.

The society guy came dressed in a basic cotton long leg shorts in kakhi and a white shirt, similar to the ones police orderlies wore those days. I am not sure whether he was supposed to wear that, though. He carried a lactometer along with him. Usually, he checked the milk with it to see if the milk was devoid of water. It had nothing to do with his trust in our people, but was more of him performing his mundane duty. Then he measured the quantity of milk with a measuring cup and poured it into the can he had tied to his cycle. The amount of milk taken by him (number of cups) would be noted in a diary by my aunt. On seeing us he used to exchange pleasantries, as we could be seen there, only during our vacations.

Rayar Uncle came around 3.00 pm in his old rickety cycle, to milk the cows again. When we hear him call out for my aunt, my brother and I used to run outside to make sure that we don’t miss anything. My aunt gave him two vessels, one big and the other small. My cousins never felt this ritual interesting as they were very used to it, because they lived there after all. There were two sheds full of different coloured cows. There were two bulls and two buffaloes also. Totally there should have been approximately 12 cows, I suppose.

Rayar uncle went to a cement tank, where water was stored from wells. Every day, early morning, Elias Uncle used to come and fill all the cement storage tanks, big cisterns, barrels and brass pots with water. One of his jobs was to clean all the tanks. Each tank had a small hole at the bottom, which was fastened with a stopper made of cloth. He removed the stopper to dispose the residual water stored the day before and cleaned the tank with new water drawn from the well, and finally fixed the stopper into place. Those days, water was drawn manually from wells. In our home, a think rope was used for it, which passed through a large wooden pulley. One end of the rope was tied to a pail, and the other end was held by the person who drew water from the well. It was fascinating to see Elias Uncle draw water from the well, which was pretty deep, in five or six swift yanks.

We followed Rayar Uncle fervently to the tank. He filled water in the small vessel and headed towards the shed in the east. The shed reeked of fresh cow dung, urine and wet straw much as it was cleaned twice a day by Kamaraj annan. We grimaced involuntarily and held our breath, letting it go only if we could not hold it any further. Rayer Uncle went beside a cow breathing easily, and gave the cow a slight pat at the side as if to reassure that it’s just its friend there and no one else. He asked us to keep a distance of about two feet from the cow and maintain silence. He squatted beside the cow and cleaned its udder with the water from the vessel. He then reached for a bottle containing castor oil, kept on a shelf on top of the shed. He poured a little amount of that oil in his palm and dabbed the tits with it.

The preliminary preparation was over. By now we would have slowly advanced towards Rayar Uncle and squatted beside him to get a better view of milking. Rayor Uncle would be so engrossed in his daily grind that he would be oblivious to our existence. He held the small vessel in-between his bent keens and slowly inched forward such that the vessel was directly below the tits. He then squeezed a teat with his thumb and forefinger of his right hand so that the milk streamed into the vessel as a frothing white liquid. He repeated the same with his left hand squeezing the teat parallel to it and continued squeezing the teats alternatively in an animated manner. He released the teats only after he made sure that a little was left for the calf, if the cow had any. If not, he continued with the act until only a small amount of milk came out of it. Next he repeated the procedure with the other two teats. As soon as the vessel was filled with the warm frothing milk, he emptied it into the larger vessel. We usually stayed till he milked two or three more cows and then ran off to watch or do something more exciting.