Of Old days, Cold waves and Buffalo Milk

The Cold Wave sweeping North India

My good friend from Mount Abu just sent me an SMS that his town experienced (-) 4.5 degree C yesterday. He said that the chill reminded him of 1976 Delhi winter when my friend and I were living in R.K. Puram in South Delhi.

Both of us were next door neighbours and once in a while were thrusted with the responsibility of fetching milk from the Delhi Milk Scheme (DMS) booth. We were both students of Class VI then.

There was no “Mother Dairy” then, as far as my memory serves me right.
DMS was the only source of milk for almost all families, save some who would go to Munirka village and buy it straight from the udder!

Each family was issued a DMS metal card which was as big as Blackberry Bold II. On my card was engraved- 1 Toned, 1 Buffalo. The Buffalo referred to the full cream milk and had lot of malai in it, which I disdained but my brother loved to eat with sugar (again bought from the ration shop).

We had to go to the milk booth with the DMS card and two empty bottles and in return we could get one Toned and one buffalo. The Toned had a red aluminium foil cap while the Buffalo had a Blue one. The two 1/2 litre bottle cost Rupee One only.
We would queue up at the booth at 5 AM and I remember that in Dec 1976, I and my friend used to wear woolen pants (with pyjama underneath) and at least three woolen sweaters before embarking upon “Mission Milk”. The booth was five minutes by walk and on one particular day, I had to run back to my house to get two “monkey caps” as we felt that our heads would freeze if we didn’t wear those crass woolen caps. I dashed back and got the two caps from my house while my friend kept our place in the long queue.
“Monkey caps is for oldies,” was my friend’s constant refrain but in Dec 1976, he found it “quite cute” to wear.
Buying Milk was full of “dhakka and mukki”. Men would jostle with one another and break the order of the queue, if it was feared that the number of milk crates supplied were less than the quota on a particular day.

The guy on the window counter was the Lord incarnate. He could give you two buffaloes instead of 1 Toned and 1 buffalo, if he was known to you. Though a very lowly paid contract employee, he was arrogance personified. So getting two bottles of milk was quite a task, I say.

We would come back home by 06:30 am and would earn a warm embrace and a cup of piping hot tea from our mothers.
I miss the “thand” of Delhi and I miss the “razai” and I really miss the DMS booth.

I had thought that DMS would have long been dead with the advent of the much more efficient and organized Mother dairy but was surprised to find that DMS has surprised. The SMS from my Mount Abu based friend forced me to go down the memory lane.

I googled Delhi Milk Scheme and came to the website http://dms.gov.in/
The website reveals that it still has over 1,298 outlet and as per the website it outsells Mother dairy in sale of milk. It also sells “Chach, Ghee, Paneer, Dahi, Toned and Double Toned,” among other things.

My brother’s favourite “Buffalo” variety is missing though.

Why was I so ignorant about DMS? Why did I assume that it would have been dead?
It is a fundamental mistake that we make when we doubt the ability of others who look clumsy and inadequate to survive.

In the kingdom of God, all can survive. May we all thrive in this new year 2011.

Amen