Two guys on a motorcycle outside of Lahore with milk jugs strapped to the back.
In Pakistan, M's family uses milk from water buffalos. They don't refrigerate it and instead keep it in a pot on the stove and re-heat it every time they want to use it. It's mostly for recipes and for use in tea anyway, as they don't drink milk very often. M only occasionally drinks milk, and only a small glass of warm milk at night once or twice a year. His whole family is like that, too.
Milk jugs on a motorcycle in Pakistan.
I think that M's family's system is not uncommon for how milk is incorporated into Pakistani life, and the reason I think that is because it's easy to see milk being delivered around the city throughout the day. Milk is usually carried by guys with big metal jugs on the back of their motorcycles. They have a delivery route and when they stop at your house, you bring a pot to the door with you. He fills up your pot with the milk and drives off to the next house.
In Lahore, on the drive to the Wagah border, we saw a lot of these milk delivery motorcycles because we were driving through the countryside where a lot of water buffalos are. One guy had five jugs, one of which was strapped to his front wheel. Sadly, we also passed by a couple of guys on the side of the road after a bike had toppled over, spilling all the milk alongside the road. I didn't get a picture, and luckily everyone was okay, but the doodh wala (milk guy) was out a whole days' work.
The Milk Delivery guy M's family uses.
M's brother waits for the Doodh-wala to fill up the pot with milk.M says that doodh walas on the whole are very poor. His family gives all of their old stuff like clothes, shoes, schoolbooks and every extra food to the doodh wala to take home to his family. When M's sister went to Pakistan to visit for the first time since leaving, she even brought the doodh wala a present - a "#1 Dad" t-shirt she'd found on sale at Target. This was when we'd brought our son to Pakistan and M joked that if anyone deserves a #1 Dad t-shirt it was him. He said that the milk delivery guy would just have to wait until they came out with "#1 Doodh Wala" t-shirts.
15 comments:
This was interesting! I love to hear about how everyday life works in different countries. Hope you're enjoying Pakistan!
Ok so, on Slumdog Millionaire the guy delivering tea was a 'chai wala'.
and i already know doodh means milk. so what exactly does wala mean? just deliverer or something?
Did you taste the buffalo milk? If so, what did you think? I don't think I have had the milk except for in tea, but I have had the cream (malai/balai). Yum.
But omg I LOVE the little cartons they have there of rose-flavored milk, and some others (I think one has some kind of nutty flavor to it?). My MIL thinks I'm strange for loving milk in general. (I drink more of it than the average non-desi). She says it's because white people have such unhealthy eating habits and so need more calcium than brown people. I didn't say anything, but I sure had plenty of things going in my head in retort...ridiculous amounts of tea-drinking being one of them.
I just learned that we will have milk delivered in plastic "sacks" to our door every day. It's then my duty to heat the milk to boiling to "process" it.
I was like HUH??? You want me to do WHAT? What happened to buying it in plastic jugs at the market???
Bear just looked at me and laughed. Siiiiigh....I'm wondering how much more I'm going to learn about before my big move to India???
Hmm...The ESL teacher at my kids' middle school (in USA) is named.......Mrs. Duhdwalla! Yes, really!
Yup, when we lived in Karachi, that's how we got our milk. It often had (animal)hairs and other crap floating in it, you really need to strain it before boiling it. Sometimes it would curdle with boiling, so the next day duhdwallah didn't get paid. I also strained it after boiling (and cooling), into a plastic jug with a pop-off lid and kept it in the fridge. Just gave it a good shake (to mix the cream) before using. Houseboy musta thought I was weird. I just couldn't go for the leaving it in a pot on the stove all day. It just wouldn't be the same in the fruity pebbles, all room-temperature-ish with a thick filmy scum on top. eew.
p.s. There's no discernable taste difference between buffalo and cow milk. Needless to say, during our stay over there, as a family our overall milk consumption was a tiny fraction of what it was back here in the states.
@ AlabasterMuslim
'wala' essentially mean 'person who has', with what they have preceding the name.
So chai wala mean 'person who tea'; doodh wala means 'person who has milk; taxi wala means 'person who has a taxi' (I kid you not).
The titles have changed now, to a more commercial sense. Typically it means the person has it, and is selling it.
= )
My husband's family buys milk in cartons in Peshawar - just like we get here in the US. If it's available in Peshawar than certainly it's available elsewhere in Pak, right?
I love when you do posts like this. I think people from Pakistan or of Pakistani descent take these parts of (and people within) our background for granted and never realize how much richness they add to our heritage.
VERY interesting post! Just about to read the rest of your blog, yay, what a treat!
Liked the post and pictures. Coming from India (Punjab) we drink a lot of milk and my habits get changed due to the taste of milk in the US. I always drink two or three cups of milk when I am in India cos it taste much better, or so do I think.
That's interesting
Wala - I'll track down a better definition (code for ask the husband), but I always thought of it as "the guy who..." because it's not always someone who's selling something. So like if my husband is telling me about some guy in a crowd he might say "Dari wala" or "the bearded guy."
LF - no, I've never tried the buffalo milk except in chai - that's my unadventurousness coming out, I guess. But I do think it makes the chai taste a little different, and I remember that when we visited my soon-to-be-sister-in-law's house for the first time, I thought their chai was FANTASTIC and found out it's because they use cow's milk.
AKA-Mahriah - I've never heard of cartons of rose milk, will have to ask M about it. I have tried rooh afza in milk, which my son LOVES. And I drink a lot of milk, but is has to be ice cold and local - for some reason milk always tastes weird when you're traveling...? And we bought cartons of cow's milk - the "Nestle Milk Pak" in Karachi for our son last time we were there.
Mostlypurple - the animal hairs thing is going to creep back into my mind next time in Pakistan, I can already tell....
Shadows - I'd be interested to know what kind of milk you drink in India - water buffalo or cow? Warm or cold?
Your blog is so very interesting. Thanks!
In India, I always had buffalo milk. The process of the milk boiling is pretty same as you described but after the first boil, my mom used to take the thick cream out from milk to make butter out of it and the heavy 100% fat milk becomes pretty 2% or 5% fat milk. I always liked it pretty hot, but now-a-days I enjoy it warm, which is usually common way of drinking milk in North India.
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