Preface: House number AK-47 is one of the houses located in a posh area of Delhi leased by ABC Company for its outstation employees and guests from its other branches. The company calls these houses its chum-pads. House number AK-47 is one such chum-pad that accommodates six individualistic girls. The tallest of them is Madhavi, a stickler for rules and propriety. The prettiest of them is Kanika, who is forever preening herself to be a sex goddess and Mother Teresa rolled into one. Lubhana is a fun-loving girl who occasionally gives in to the memories of a personal tragedy. The narrator, Anusuya, is a workaholic, who is primarily in the hostel to be away from her wedding-obsessed parents. Her sister, Meeta, who works in the same company, becomes Anusuya’s roommate for a short while. Nandini is a guest employee from the company’s Chennai branch. Being a senior and married, she has advice and tips for the younger girls who look up to her as some kind of a mother figure.

 

 

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Methinks you are a glass and not my brother.

-Shakespeare in The Comedy of Errors

 

The character in question here is, of course, not a glass or a jug but the mirror image of the person speaking. If you thought, such confusion over identical siblings happens only in plays or movies or showbiz of any other kind, sit up because in real world too you may get to rub your eyes and see double. You have to believe me because I am one such sibling living a double role. And speaking from experience, I would say that all this confusion is not much of a comedy for the siblings, more a nuisance.

 

However, one incident at least led me to believe that the situation could prove ticklish in real life, even without the excitement and drama of the separations and subsequent reunions that fate has a habit of bestowing on fictitious characters.

 

The incident happened in AK-47 when my sister moved in 3 months after I had. Possibly, she was misled by my rosy reports of a hostel life. Being not the kind to see me have all the fun, she joined to give me company.

 

There is a good three years difference between our ages but the way some people react, we might as well have been twins. In the first few days after her arrival, confusion thrived in AK-47 but slowly the mix up got restricted merely to the names. That was something I didn’t mind, because, quite often, I did that myself, call my sister by my name that is. By no time the other girls got to know the little differentiating characteristics that existed between us.

 

But for those outside the house, there were practically just five girls living in the house and not the actual six.

 

One of such blissfully ignorant was our erstwhile dhoodhwala. Erstwhile did I say? Fired more or less! My stomach still turns at the memory of the dubious foul-smelling white liquid he supplied in the name of milk. He had started off well with good milk and then mistaking us for sitting ducks, started to pull his fast ones on us.

 

At the first whiff of its foul smell, Madhavi said we ought to complain. This was a complicated matter in itself. Nobody likes to be disturbed from their morning slumber to receive the milkman with a jug, and be the only one doing so everyday in a house of six. Therefore, to keep peace in the house, we took turns to answer to the milkman’s early morning call of dhoodh liyo ji. The situation was further complicated with the services of the early morning supply distributed between his seven or so brothers of differing age and heights. Communicating our message to the right quarters of the vendor was thus a problem.

 

It was Kanika’s turn the next day and I was quite skeptical about how the she-monk would deliver the complaint. So at the call of the man, I shifted the curtains slyly to see how the event would unfold. It turned out that today the youngest of the deliverers, a 10 year old, was assigned the duty. Kanika delivered a faint admonition – with a loving pat, and a smile. The child in reaction blushed and nodded and I thought - this won’t do. This won’t do at all.

 

We kept the offensive on with each girl complaining to whoever was delivering the milk that day. The milk meanwhile went from bad to worse. One evening when it was my turn to make the tea, the milk literally smelled and tasted like cow dung. After draining off the last of (my hard-put efforts) our tea-cups down the sink, we all agreed that the milkman should be fired. The vote also went in favor of milk packets.

 

I suppose AK-47 was where I got educated of the extensive knowledge I have on milkmen. Here was where I first noticed the two main varieties they come in. First is the silent meek type, who accepts the negative decisions of their customers gracefully. The second type is the vociferous unabashed kind, who brushes off such orders by attributing them to a temporary state of mental illness of his customers. Our milkman belonged to the second set. So several days of “Please go, we have employed another vendor” passed without any signs of the milkman bidding us the final goodbye. Instead, the eldest milkman would himself arrive at our doorstep, with the jug and a new-found punctuality.

 

On the other hand, the new milkman belonged to the first set of milkmen. Referred from the boys’ chum-pad, this shy man seemed to be quite reluctant of delivering our order. Much to our chagrin and general irritation, he came an hour earlier. Next he would merely tap the entry gate from the lawn side and when no one responded, would leave the premises as fast as he could. Starved again of our daily milk and tea, we held a second meeting. It was decided that we would a) ask the new milkman to come two hours later and b) insist that he rang the bell of the main door. That decided all we had to do was sight the milkman before he yet again slipped into the dawn. This, that is the sighting of the milkman, didn’t happen for quite a while.

 

On the next weekend, I was ironing my office clothes for the week when I became conscious of a babbling voice from a little afar. The voice, I saw, came from our ex-milkman, his neck sticking above over our lawn walls. The voice lost its intensity but was still audible as it permeated through the glass panels of the living room.

 

Without really listening to the babbling, I comprehended that he had come to convince us out of the new milk vendor and renew his erstwhile services. I had a faint suspicion that he had something to do with the painful shyness of our new milkman. Milkmen often use some crude methods of crumbling the competition.

 

For sometime, the ex-milkman kept babbling and I kept ironing. Seeing that, even though I had quite a lot to iron, I might not outrun the person’s babbling capacity, I tried to plug the one sided flow by a few words of my own such as “The milk you deliver is ba-a-a-a-d.”

 

This would ebb the flow for a second to resume with renewed fervor. On being addressed again, I would again deliver the refrain - “The milk you deliver is ba-a-a-a-d.” -  thus maintaining a persistent stance on the matter. This went on for sometime when finally the milkman changed tack by promising to bring good milk the next day for sampling.

 

Teek hai? Teek hai? He nodded in agreement to himself hoping that I would mirror his actions. I nodded neither ways, hoping that this would make him go. I related this incident to the other girls the same evening.

 

As it happened, my sister, fresh from her arrival one week ago, was sitting by the gate reading a book when the ex-milkman appeared next morning, true to his unsolicited promise, with a jug of milk.

 

“Should I bring it in?” He asked politely for her permission, with an air of someone who had met a secret accomplice. My sister who was seeing this person for the first time mistook him for the new milkman.

 

Remembering the details of the last meeting, she gave him a loud and strict order of coming by the main gate and ringing the bell. The milkman, all delighted and hopeful, rushed to the main gate to perform the said demonstration. This open display of happiness obviously made Meeta suspicious.

 

Enlightenment suddenly struck.

Oh! This is the old milkman Anu was talking about, she thought as she went to answer the bell now ringing out loud and clear. She opened the door and said “The milk you deliver is ba-a-a-a-d.” 

 

Then she slammed the door.

 

We didn’t hear from the ex-milkman again. And yes, I gathered that there is some advantage in having an identical sibling after all.

 

*dhoodh liyo ji – Take the milk

*Teek hai? - You agree?