The Milkman

-Moheindu Chemjong,

Perth, Western Australia

 

The milkman was an ugly man. Do I have the right to comment on somebody else’s looks? Maybe not. Well, I suppose equating the milkman with the adjective “ugly” was something I learnt while growing up. I was told he started bringing us milk even before I was born, some twenty years ago. Even till date, he still works as the alternate alarm clock for our family.

 

The “gwala dai” had a face full of scars, it looked like millions of pox scars on his dark face, complemented with two tiny deep-set eyes and a distorted nose. He wasn’t handsome and lacked appeal but the smile from his face never waned through the years. Those small eyes looked deep in spite of the size and they had a rather cunning twist to them. I always saw him in a traditional daura and I cannot remember seeing him without a Nepali topi. At a time when satellite telly and the internet had helped Nepalese men be heavily influenced by the western culture and when they had began to fantasize themselves as being Amrikans, gwala dai wore his daura and topi with pride. Did patriotism flow in those veins? I used to wonder. The other striking feature of him was the awful stench-combined of milk, curd, and ghee as if the whole of the Lagankhel dairy had come visit our house early mornings. Maybe it was this attribute that made him the unwelcome guest in the house. The maids got mad at him for no apparent reason, they swore at him, poor thing! The male workers looked at him with uncanny hatred as if their eyes boiling with disgust would hurt him. The gwala dai wasn’t Shah Rukh Khan or Rajesh Hamal with killer looks to give them a complex. Seriously, there was nothing fancy about him that could ever make anybody on earth feel so small. I wondered if it was those scars that made him so special, or maybe the male workers found nobody but him to laugh at, ridicule and show their power! Ha, cowardly power, signs of an insecure soul?!!

 

Well in fact the virus had caught me, too. For some unusual and unexplained reason, I had a dislike for him, too. Was I taught to despise him? I don’t know. He used to come by the house at the end of every month to collect money and varying opinions used to blast from the kitchen door, “ Your milk is no good”, “You’re a fraud”, “Better wait quietly for the money or get lost.” Nasty comments and rude remarks altogether from everybody all at the same time- had those scars turned our maids tart-tongued as if tens and dozens of sharp scissors were in their mouths? Poor gwala dai, didn’t they realize that he was made of flesh and bones? Did he get derogatory remarks at every household he visited? He wasn’t committing a crime, the gardener, the man who collected garbage also arrived at the end of every month to collect money. How come they were never the subjects of ridicule? If you looked at the servicescape, he (the service) was coming to our doorsteps, weren’t we lucky in fact? It wasn’t like where I live today where I often have to rush to the grocery in the mornings to make myself a cup of tea. Tea hardly tastes the same without the milk given by gwala dai. In the grocery I can pick a whole range of milk from low fat, skimmed, full cream, high calcium low fat in quite a few brands. I wonder how gwala dai’s milk would look all packed in cartoons and sold at department stores. Would it be called gwala dai’s home brand or by some other name that would speak for gawala dai’s persona?

 

I had heard stories of gwala dai’s sons working abroad, making mega bucks. Often the maids made this an issue and asked him why he had to charge the milk so high when his sons were rich. I could never comprehend the comments and his answers. Did resilience work for gwala dai? When did he read Deepak Chopra? Or was he a thorough gentleman who had been taught not to answer back at women? He was a regular at my place for some reason or the other though we rarely bumped into one another. One day, even when Mom decided to make a regular no more by discontinuing his service, she had been compelled not to. That morning, gwala dai had created a ruckus, a big hangama, “Madam, how can you say to me?I started bringing you milk even before Maiya was born”. Mom must have felt sorry and must have succumbed to his request.

 

Gwala dai used to live in a far-off village called Chapagaon. Whenever Dad used to take us for a drive, everyone would shout “This is Gwala dai’s village.” He used to commute long distances from Chapagaon to many places in Kathmandu on his old bicycle in the wee hours of the morning to deliver milk. From Ekantakuna to Jawalakhel and from Kupondol to New Road, almost the whole of his mornings were spent like this. Whichever house he went to, he would collect news and the latest gossip and bring it to our home. He must have been saying things about our maids and male workers, too. If there was anybody selling a piece of land, he would come over and tell my parents. He used to be adamant and till an answer was given, he would knock on the door over and over again, he used to work as a broker as a part-time business, from what I understood.

 

Gwala was okay with me. I was always busy in my own world and never bothered about him. He used to call me “Maiya” and he used to always always tell me how tall I’d grown and how cute and chubby I used to be when I was a baby. We hardly talked except for a casual hello now and then. It was on those rare occasions when I woke up before five-thirty that we had a conversation. “Maiya, people have started jogging on the Ring Road, even old folks, how come you’re sleeping till now?’ he always used to say. I can’t remember how I used to tackle that question. I am sure I was asked that question at least a hundred times. How could I explain my body clock to him? Though I often wished I could get up at four like our gwala dai and John Milton, I could never ever bring myself closer to doing that, I had given up for once and for all. And especially in the harsh, cold Kathmandu winters, no, never.

 

 

This was till I left home for overseas. In the mornings when my alarm rings, I long for a cup of beautiful Illam or Tokla tea served in bed. Of course, I don’t have either of the luxuries, I make myself Dilmah tea with Browne’s low fat milk and I miss the kind of milk I grew up drinking. Maybe I’m too accustomed to gwala dai’s milk, I sometimes dislike the smell and taste of the finest Aussie milk. I call up my sister and we laugh at the jokes on gwala dai, his scars, the unwanted visitor, his looks, this and that. “Why was he the laughing stock all the time, “she asks. How important the gwala has been to our family for so long and yet we never appreciated him. How often in the complexities of life we forget to pay tribute to the backstage actors in the play of our lives! We compose an email to Mom asking her to give him our regards. Yes, we are awaiting the reply!