Pure as milk

I HAVE noted a spring in the step of the Defence-cum-External Affairs Minister, Jaswant Singh. He is also more articulate while putting forth India's case on global terrorism to the West. For this sudden transformation, Singh, I believe, had to thank farmer Balbir Singh of Bhalot village in Rohtak district of Haryana. Balbir is the son of Pratap Singh, an ex-serviceman and an admirer of the Defence Minister. According to a New Delhi daily, when the Minister recently attended an ex-serviceman's rally at Panchkula, Balbir presented him with a handpicked buffalo. In Haryana, the possession of a buffalo meant honour and prestige.

The Minister was a bit embarrassed by the gift but was told he could not auction it and hand over the proceedings to charity. The gift was something special. The Haryana Chief Minister, Om Prakash Chautala, intervened and had the buffalo delivered to Jaswant Singh's ministerial bungalow in New Delhi. We can now presume that ever since that day, Singh had been consuming fresh, highly nutritious buffalo milk that accounts for his increased dynamism.

Yes, the theme of this column is milk that has a special role in our lives. It was considered healthy to wind up the day with a glass of milk, which my mother offered me every night. A cup of milk was all right at night, but not in the morning or during the day. During my long stay in Gujarat, I was a bit nonplussed when tall, well-built, grown-up men steadfastly refused offers of tea and coffee on the pretext that they drank only milk. I was then new to the State having come from the South, where it was believed that milk was only for children. At home, we were introduced to morning coffee from a young age and the addiction continued.

We are familiar with packaged milk, bottled milk, milk from the tap and so on. My earliest memories, however, are the daily rounds of the palkaran (milk man) out with his cow and calf, trying his best to evade detection from adding water to milk. This was an act of which the great magician Houdini could be proud. The eagle-eyed housewives or other members of the family could not detect the sleight of hand that resulted in their quota of milk becoming half water and half milk, with the milkman doing nothing that could be seen. Anandavikatan, the popular Tamil magazine, was full of jokes about milkmen trying to turn water into milk and sometimes getting caught in the act. Occasionally, the calf (mostly a buffalo calf) was a stuffed one, but the poor cow or buffalo was not aware of it. I had always wondered at the affinity between water and milk in Tamil Nadu. Why did vendors mix milk with water? During my subsequent days in Delhi, Gujarat and Mumbai, I never came across a similar problem. Milk was always pure and available in plenty. But I do hope the situation had changed since then in Tamil Nadu.

In our science classes in school, we learnt how nutritious milk was. This was before the days of Maneka Gandhi who does not think much of milk. English lessons at school carried frequent references to cheese that were a major part of the British diet. Our teachers, unfamiliar with this delicacy, tried in vain to explain what Palkatti (cheese) tasted like. This was of course, before the days of Amul and the Operation Flood!

Pal (milk) and Pazham (fruit) always went together. They were offered as prasadam to gods and brides and bridegrooms had to eat it as part of the wedding ritual. Impoverished heroes and heroines in Tamil films sang sad songs that they and their children did not want palum-pazhamum but would be content with oru pidi saadam (a handful of rice). For the heroine, separated from her lover, even milk tasted bitter and she complained about the taste to her thozhi (friend). Well-known singers like D. K. Pattamal sang songs that reflected this sentiment, palum kashandadi padukkai nondadhadi (the milk tasted bitter, even the soft bed was painful).

In my boyhood, I could not escape references to Pal. Grandfather told us tales where devas and asuras churned the milk ocean and received several goodies, which the former snatched away through tricks. I always had a sneaking sympathy for the asuras who were the underdogs. In the "Mahabharata", archery wizard Dronacharya was so poor that his son Aswattama did not know what milk was and how it tasted. The poor boy was fed with a mixture of flour and water and told it was milk. But he saw through the trick and demanded the genuine thing that he could receive only after his father became the official archery coach to the Pandava and Kaurava princes. After that, I presume, the milk flowed at Drona's home.

Growing up in South India, we became accustomed to the proliferation of milk-based delicacies. Pal payasam was a popular sweet, but became too common to retain its special status. One leaned more towards a different version of the same popular in Kerala, the delicious, Paladai pradhaman served mostly at weddings. Years later, in Gujarat, it made an appearance as dudhpak. I was more partial to items like thirattupal and the Palgova that was seldom made at home. Yes, there was something special about this sweet. My favourite actor of these days, T.R.Mahalingam sang a popular number in the film, "Adityan Kanavu" which lavished praise on Palgova. Being a classical singer, he did a lot of niraval on the word Palgova and to this day, I can remember and sing this song. That is minor consolation, being a diabetic; I have to keep away from palgova.

I am sure our Defence Minister will benefit with helpings of palgova and stand up to men like his Pak counterpart, Abdul Sattar.

I am sure of this because no Pakistani farmer had ever thought of presenting his foreign minister with a buffalo. We have won the race on this issue and should derive the maximum advantage from it.

V. GANGADHAR

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