Milk

"Milkman - why is this milk so watery?"

"Ma'am, the buffaloes on hot days like to drink lots of water - which is why the milk is like that only."

Attending high-school in the foothills of the Himalayas, these old jokes did their rounds - especially when we would see the milk men bring their mules close to a certain spring on the way up to the Flag Hill gap.

Today we have a whole parallel industry in creating duplicates. The papers occassionally profile folks caught making 'synthetic milk' - white looking stuff which they seal in plastic bags and mix with real milk to more than double their profits.

With milk touching Rs. 22 per litre - there is a money to be... pardon the expression - milked.

How much of what we consume so freely is 'real' and how much duplicated? I am told that there is a factory in Bhandup that supplies the hotels in the Mulund area with whatever cold drink they want - Pepsi, Coke, Thums Up, Sprite - you name it - better than the real one - and a lot cheaper. The factory makes it to order. The boxes arrive and are consumed and no one - it seems - is the wiser.

On a very different - but perhaps linked note: we are being visited by Fred - a pastor from the US who is on a sabbatical and is touring the land to listen and learn. He said something fascinating - his take on Gen X (or Y or whatever) is that they abhor consumerism like anything - and cherish above all else authenticity and 'realness'. They want community and they want it now and it has to be uber cool and so real. But yet strangely enough the very concept of community is then turned into a commodity. And very few seem ready to put in the hard work it takes to make community.

I can't comment on the veracity of Fred's observation. It seems to have an intuitive goodness of fit to it, though. What I can say is that so often I want things to be real, perfect, excellent - but I want it to be so without my involvement - and for it to exist anytime I would like to access it. There are a suspicious number of "I"s present in all the above. Contrast that with John the Baptiser's statement: "I must decrease so that He may increase".

Love must be real.

I'll drink a cup of milk (real I hope) to that.