Milk Medley

The darkness of the night was losing its battle with dawn which was streaking in. However, that was always a foregone conclusion.

The dawn, thus victorious, swept in with all its golden hue and beauty.

Few of the residents of Tricity Promenade had woken up and a few more were about to wake up. Largely the morning walkers, the meditators, and the yoga types.

Gadekar Kaka had climbed up the stairs from the 14th floor for his morning walk on to the terrace.

Soon daylight started overpowering the dawn and the Sun God appeared from the East. It was light now and most Promenedians were now awake except the late sleepers like Sarfaraz and Soumya.

Almost the first ritual of the day of every Promenedian was to open the front door of their apartment and pick up the milk packet placed outside the door by the milkman.

But today was a different as each Promenedian in different strata of time from late dawn to morning opened their door but could not find the milk packet. Individually they thought that their milkman was late, but inquisitive Promenedians got their hands dirty to probe deeper. Thus started a milky affair.

Nihal, Sachin, Anand, through discrete sources, found out that there was a power outage and the lift was not working so most of the milkmen had dumped the packets of milk in the lobby. The news spread and through the Watsapp group each Promenedian now knew that their milk packet was at the lobby.

It was now time for each to walk down, collect the packet of milk, and walk back up. In every household, this decision gave way to serious debate, discussion, and argument. The point was whoever (husband, wife, or children) went down to collect the milk would have to walk up all the way some to the 13th floor, some to the 9th floor, and so on. The task was not easy.

A serious comedy thus unfurled.

Nihal wanted Anu to go down to collect the milk, but Anu said if she does that, she would wait for the power to come back so that she could come up by the lift. Now, this meant Nihal would get late his morning tea late, so he decided to walk down himself.

Hethal requested her husband Samant to do the honors and Samant happily agreed.

Gadekar Kaka had finished his walk and climbed down to his 14th-floor apartment only to realize that tea was not ready. This was a break of a 30 year routine for the retired man.

Residents’ 10th floor and above like Prantik, Rajesh, Soumya, Gadekar Kaka, Sachin Chavan, Ninad all got into a conference call and felt that one of them should go down to the lobby and the others would place themselves on the 4th, 8th, 10th, 12th, and 14th-floor landing so that the milk could be passed like a relay instead of one person walking all the way up.

However, there was a flaw in this. The milk packets could move up this way but the person in need of tea or coffee still would have to walk up to his apartment.

In the meantime, quite a crowd had gathered at the lobby. Anand, Samant, Sachin Nair, Shraddha, Hedait Bhai, Shazia, Nihal, Ninad, and many more. Subhash the day supervisor had laid out the milk packets neatly on the reception table for everyone to come and pick them up.

Sachin Nair picked up two packets one his own and the other for Bhavna and Abhishek thinking since that since they were on the same floor there was no harm being the good Samaritan. He walked up to his house opened the packet and put the milk on the boil and Watsapped Bhavna to come and collect their packet. Bhavna requested her husband Abhishek who knocked on Sachin’s door and Sachin handed him the packet of milk.

When Abhishek brought this home Bhavna realized that they take double-toned milk but this was different, so Abhishek went back to Sachin to exchange but Sachin had already put his milk on the boil. It was thus decided that Bhavna should also boil this packet of milk and then they could exchange boiled milk. Someone termed it a heated exchange.

Others quickly quipped that there was enough of it ( heated exchange ) in the society even without the boiled milk.

Soumya the Bong who has been spending a lot of time doing mandwali between arguing and fighting residents suggested that they both freeze their milk into ice cream or kulfi and then exchange so that there was no heated exchange.

However, this could lead to a cold war said Shraddha, so the idea was dropped.

In the meantime, Samant had picked up his milk packet at the lobby but was not finding the energy to climb back up immediately. However, he wanted to have his morning tea. Sarfaraz and Ninad came up with a brilliant idea. They took Samant’s packet to the tea vendor outside the gate and told him to make tea for all the people in the lobby. So, while Anand was coming back from his morning walk he saw a festive group of Promenedians enjoying their tea in the lobby.

He joined them and informed Aarti to send down some cookies and Subhash the day supervisor was dispatched to collect them.

In the meantime, many had come to the lobby, picked up their milk packet, and had started walking up. All those coming down were met with a steady stream of persons walking up with milk packets in hand.

Bhavna decided to join the fun and so did Sagar but while climbing down the stairs to the lobby they met Bhaskaran Sir midway sitting on the stairs with a look of despair. It was then they realized that out of the three packets that Bhaskaran Sir was carrying up one had fallen from his hand and burst, and the milk had spilled out.

Bhaskaran Sir was literally crying over spilt milk.

In the meantime, the scene at the lobby had got a bit serious because Nihal from his phone had sent out a mail to the Managing Committee that the situation was managed badly by the existing committee. Being the Ex-secretary, he had some knowledge in the matter.

He further wrote that this could have been solved by quickly hiring a cow and a buffalo and placing them in the lobby so that people could milk them as per their requirements. Vijay Babar also suggested that this could have been booked online through sites like cowudder.com and crazybuffallo.com.

On seeing this mail an emergency meeting of the existing committee was called and the matter was discussed and a plan of action was put in place as under:

The committee would identify all milch cows and buffalos within a 5 Kms radius of the society to take care of such a situation. Shraddha and Rucha were given the task of this identification which was to be completed in 15 days.

Another group was formed to punch P (meaning promenade) with election ink on all these identified cows and buffalos so as to book them for Promenade. Sachin Nair and Anand were given this task.

Anand and Sarfaraz were told to do two types of research:
On the two websites suggested by Vijay.
On the quality, age, etc of the cows and buffalos so identified. For this purpose, they decided to use the help of a Vet who could also medically examine the animals.

Hediat Bhai and Ranjit decided to contact all the dairies in the vicinity to see if they could create a backup through them. They also decided to call all the milk delivery boys of the society and put them through some physical tests like running and jumping so as to only have milk delivery boys who were fit and could run up till the 14th floor to deliver milk even if the lift was not working. It was felt that Abhishek’s, Paramita’s, and Bhavna’s help would be sought to test their fitness levels.

Samant suggested that all these movements and actions should be documented, and every cow, buffalo, and dairy be photographed for records. He suggested that he would devise a foolproof format for the same.

Shazia was given the task to research if the Society could build up a stock of good quality milk powder for such situations.

In order to make the process transparent and democratic, the following was also decided:

The task force was to be headed by a mature and knowledgeable member of the society. For this purpose, Karaya’s name was suggested.
Ninad was appointed as the technical consultant.
Vijay was roped in for his political connections and for exploring the availability of milk vans in such situations.
It was also decided to write to Tamanna at the builder’s end with CC to Lekhi to seek their suggestions in the matter as they could have faced similar situations in their other projects.

As the emergency meeting was dispersed with clear action points Shraddha suggested that she would make a worksheet to monitor the progress and Anand would help her create a bar chart of the progress of the project.

In the meantime, power had resumed, and the lifts had started working. Everyone suddenly realized that in the process of collecting milk from the lobby most had picked up the wrong packet. So skimmed was replaced by double toned, full cream was replaced by Toned, Low fat got replaced with Desi, Cow was replaced with Buffalo.

In a nutshell, everyone had milk but different milk.

Nihal also suggested that as Ex-Secretary he could accompany the present Chairman Prantik to Singapore to explore technology to counter this as he was aware that some development in the matter had been done.

The promenedians milky life has been happy thereafter.