For Good Night's Sleep

Cardamom flavoured milk

Fragrant milk with divine cardamoms, a pinch of turmeric, crushed ginger and jaggery. Almost payasam in silver tumbler. More than this milk, it is hanuman and skanda nama for a peaceful night sleep.

No matter, how much I cook, lazy me always beseeches mom to make this for me. And mom never says no.


I used to wait for a long time for fresh cow's milk to drink in the silver tumbler. But at last gave up, only in villages, we can get fresh cow's milk. Have to be content with pasteurized packet milk. After reading about maggots in milk pipes, in a case study, in Daft's Managing Organisations, i try not to think about the conditions in which milk is processed. In that case study, the guy had a dilemma on meeting strict time schedules on sending milk trucks. Cleaning the maggot infested pipes meant missing the delivery deadline.

Decades ago, when we used to go to our native village for summer holidays. We had a nameless white cow in the shed. Around 3:30 pm, a milkman would come and milk the cow. After selling most of the yield, there would be a little left for us. I would drink a little of that warm milk without boiling, without sugar. Granny had an aluminium litre can and she would tell me not to put spoon or ladle inside it, since that would alter the volume.

Then, for mattu pongal, we would feed sweet pongal to the calf and cow and lead the cow till a small temple under a tree in the middle of the mud road. It was in my 4th standard summer holidays, i was still puny and leading a huge cow was quite scary for me, but that cow meekly came as I held the rope tightly. The next cow encounter was decades later for a gomatha pooja in Kodumudi Chandramoulishwarar. I had to bow my head even before cow's rear end, after feeding it a banana. Wonder who created these rituals!