One Sunday, driving around town, I found myself tailing a milk man on a scooter and my mind went back to when we were children- The doorbell rang- its was the ‘doodhwala’ with his milk can and the indispensible ‘measure’. The smell of the fresh milk made me giddy as he measured and poured it out! Cut to this morning, I open the door and see two packets of milk and I couldn’t help but make the comparison between then and now!
On idle holidays we would sit around watching the lawn being mowed, taking in the smell of freshly cut grass; when grandpa brought mangoes and jackfruit, they still had the sticky sap oozing from the stem, the groundnuts came in bunches with the soil still on! We had to carefully wash them before we popped them open and enjoyed them! Ditto for green gram and peas.
The town market used to be a crazy medley of sights and smells, the fresh coriander in luscious tones of neon green filling the surroundings with a heady perfume, the huge mounds of long runner beans entwined like little snakes, the neat piles of bottle gourd and aubergines, the seductive red tones of ripe tomatoes, the slender pods of drumsticks, huge piles of marigold flowers, earthy looking potatoes, colocasia and yam, white garlic and pink onion with their rustling skins, big heaps of green chillies beckoning to savour their fieriness.
When the market came to town, fresh was a given, but even then we had to do the coconut-shake to see how much water was sloshing inside, the watermelon-tap to check for ripeness, the melon-sniff to make sure they were sweet enough and the okra-top-snap to check for tenderness
The road and the milkman turned and I drove on ahead wondering if I would ever find the milkman to tail again - so that I could relive those fresh days just once more in this tetrapacked world.
