It was end May and the World Cup Football was slated to begin early June. I had a tape player and my rather patchy collection of music included Tull, Pink Floyd, Genesis, Led Zeppelin, CSNY, Beatles and a few jugalbandis of HariPrasad Chaurasia on the flute. Using the midnight live telecasts as an excuse, I moved into the farm with my clothes, a mattress and a bundle of newspapers for a pillow. The arrangement was that food would be delivered by my brother every morning and the returning milkmen my lunch and supper. In a village, supper is usually taken at dusk and its sort of midnight by 8pm.Early June nights are pretty warm and the mosquitoes by night had their own brand of buzz music. My bed was the wooden flat bed of the cart that transported grass to the town in 1 buck bundles. There was no control over the number of bundles that went out and the money that came in. A cozy arrangement for the cart driver, Wealth King, and his assistant, Small God. The first night was terrible, my sleep cycle had to be adjusted to those of the buffaloes, all chewing cud silently, and an occasional deep long breath of contentment.
By midnight, the farm came alive and I was happy to be relieved of the drudgery of sleep, punctuated by the swarm’s buzz music. Can you hear it? Yes?. Good. The milkmen, two of them, went about their job, kneading the thick, leathery teats with the knuckles of their thumbs and the peech, peech sound of milk hitting the can, clutched between their knees, was the sound of the cash register jingling. I hit the hut with a vengeance, rummage around and play the number Money by Pink Floyd, not very loud, but loud enough. I wanted to introduce my Azhagi to my music. And sure enough, she gave a small bellow. My brother Salim and his partner Venkatesh were beside themselves with anger.
I went around and started to scratch the back of Azhagi’s ears to soothe her down, she was being milked and I could hear small noises coming from her throat and in the dark, she was nuzzling me. This one must have been a princess in her previous life, I mused. As soon as the music played itself out, the muted noises from her stopped. Hmm, this girl loved to rock, man. I led her to the feeding place tied her up loosely and measured out her feed carefully and started to pump the water out; the whole byplay being watched by the others, warily.
White God was cleaning up the sheds and refilling with hay.
I fed Azhagi and began to lead her to her usual place. She stayed put for a while and then dragged me towards my hut. I got it. She wanted Pink Floyd, but then I decided to play Songs from the Woods by Tull. She plonked herself down near the doorless entrance and I squatted, crosslegged by her side. Eventually, she stretched her neck and put her head on my lap and as if by instinct, I began scratching her ears, while waving the mosquitoes away futilely with one hand. I began dozing off and as if in a dream heard the murmurs of worry, while the rest of the milking went on as well the feeding.
The milk was poured into two 40 liter cans and water mixed in equal proportions, by my brother and his partner. And one of the milkmen, Durai, kept guard. He normally left at the crack of dawn, with White God leaving the minute he finished his job of cleaning, stacking and feeding the buffalos was over.
On this the first day, of my stay at the farm, they found us, as Phoebus rose in the east and the sounds of the village waking itself up for its daily toil on the fields of paddy, the mango orchards, the coconut groves and the banana and sugarcane plantations; I was slumped over her, she keeping a wary eye open and letting out deep sighs of contentment, with her long tail swishing the mosquitoes and the flies away from my face. I guess, in her mind, she had taken her vows with me, that night. My princess, from the animal kingdom. I woke up to the sounds of the village belles giggling at the sight perhaps. We must have slept for about 4 hours that night, a pattern that became a routine.
By this time the grass cutters had come and were cutting the grass, a variety called CO1, which grows as tall as 6 feet and ensures the thickness of the milk. Azhagi nudged me awake, fully, and after I had risen, she rose too and walked gracefully to the bathing pond, with me trotting behind docilely, the rope from her neck, trailing. Buffaloes like to stay cool and be well fed. I switched the bore well’s pump on and the water came out with a force that felt nice. She sank into the pond, rolled around and was grunting all the time. By this time one of the grass cutters had come and showed me how to bathe these 4 legged clefts. And I started. Azhagi relished every moment. I was a bit hesitant to clean her teats, her backside and her pussy. In fact I blushed doing it, but she didn’t seem to bother.
The procession started. Each buffalo was brought in and by the time it was all over it was 8 in the morning and I had been introduced to a few more by names. There was the Boat, she was the oldest of the lot. Then there was Shorty, brown hairs on black skin. And one was called the Rogue, simply because she would incite the others to stampede and go walkabout as if she wasn’t part of the fiasco. The rest of the bunch followed what Boat, Shorty and Azhagi did, the latter was the queen and she was feared even by the Rogue. This time, I took care not to coochi-coo with any of them, their brief histories being narrated to me by White God as he brought them in and then took them out and tied them to short stakes tied in the open 1 acre to let them dry out. All the while, I was under the watchful unblinking gaze of Azhagi who had settled herself by the side of the bathing pond.
Finally, I led her to her stake, tied her down, kissed her forehead and went off to help in cleaning up the stalls and filling the hay, topped with grass, freshly cut.
The grass cutters were back and I sat, listening to the replay on TV, about last night’s match. We counted the bundles as they were stacked on the cart, tied down and they set off for their breakfast. Except for Azhagi, everyone had been brought back, by White God and usual to her practice Rogue snatched a few mouthfuls of succulent grass from every stall that she passed. I went into the grass fields, defecated, came back to the bathing pond and washed ineffectively the weariness from my city- slick bones and on my way back, took Azhagi to her stall.
I had my first smoke for the day and by nine I was ravenously hungry. Azhagi called out for me, I just kept quiet. There was a certain tranquility to the farm. The sibilant sounds of grass and hay being pulled, munched was bliss to me and I dozed off. By half past nine, my brother and his partner land up and I gorge on my breakfast, smoked and stretched my self out. At noon I was woken up by White God for the whole cycle of milking and feeding. By two when it was over; one of the milkmen had come with my lunch and I washed myself up and had lunch.
By 4, after I had woken up from a nap, I could feel the electric tension in the air. T strolled to the stalls and found White God to be missing. It was his watch and he had gone AWOL. It was then, that the wafting breeze brought a very strange smell to my nostrils, I went quickly around the stalls and noticed each one of them was tense and even Azhagi was unusually stiff. It was then that I noticed that all of them were standing. Although, I knew it was time for the usual evening cleaning up, clearly something was wrong. I shrugged it away, the feeling I mean and began untying them one by one, but Azhagi stood firm, so I untied Rogue and looked at Azhagi, giving her a “ if you aint coming then this one is mine kind of look” she snorted right back at me, but ambled across.
You got to keep them girls on a tight leash.:-)
I walked both of them across to the open space where they had to be tied to the stakes. I bent to tie down Rogue. I heard a ferocious snort, a rush of hooves and turning the other way caught a blur of movement and Azhagi was on her hind legs and came down hard with her forelegs. Looking down, I froze. She had come down hard on a 6-7 foot cobra, which was still writhing in pain, the back broken in two places, unable to use its fangs. I recovered fast enough, to quickly chop it down with the sickle that I had stuck to my tennis shorts, threw the corpse away and then it hit me.The smell.
It was the smell of a cobra, a typical smell, that I was introduced to, last evening by Venkatesh. He had told me to be wary and taught me how to stick the sickle in my shorts for a quick draw, so to say. White God walked in, I told him what happened, he just shrugged it off and went about the business of cleaning the stall, whilst I brought each animal out.
After I was done, I realized what Azhagi had done for me, the precious girl!! I looked around for her and she was where I had left her, her stare at me. I called out to her, she looked away. Talk of being miffed. This one was better than any cleft of the human species I had ever met. I called out again. Nary a movement, nah. I walked across, she was looking out for me from the corner of her eyes, the enchantress. I put my arm around her neck.It was tense, muscles corded up. I massaged her forelegs and she grunted in approval. All the while, I was jabbering away at her. Telling her she was the love of my life and that I was eternally grateful to her for saving my life, but still no approving snort.
I got up kissed her forehead, her eyes, scratched her ears and then she relented, and walked all the way back to her stall, regally. Her man, in tow.
It was much later that I came to know that the cobra was to be released into the hut by White God under the instructions of Venkatesh, to scare me off the farm. But White God panicked and let it off near the haystack mound where the buffalos were tied up in the evening.
Instead, I fell deeper in love.
