Time and Milk

Khoya (or khoa or khova) is milk that has been reduced to one fifth of its original volume. It kind of resembles something between ricotta cheese and home made play dough. It is used to make Indian sweets (particularly burfi, gulab jammun, and halwa). It took me about two hours and a half to turn two litres of milk into khoya the other day. Like in a trance, I stirred and stirred until my forearms ached, then I stirred until I could feel the arthritis I am sure to get, then I stirred some more. A few days prior to this, I made desi (or usli) ghee. This involved skimming the cream from the milk for two weeks, turning the cream into yogurt, whipping the yogurt into butter, and then slowly heating the butter so that all the casein and liquid evaporates and the butter is clarified. Agitating something for hours is busy work.

We finally got our car today. We started the process on September 21. It is October 24. However, it was only in the last week that things started happening.

Monday:

We demand that the car be delivered.

We don't have the color you want.

Give us another color.

Okay, we will drive it out to you first thing in the morning.

Tuesday morning:

We don't have payment.

[Call accounts, where is the check?]

Okay, you need four signatures on this check? You have how many?

One.

Tuesday afternoon:

Can you take a check that is half signed.

Okay, okay, no problem. We will bring the car today.

Wednesday morning:

You didn't bring the car.

Car? What car? That car has been sold.

Wait. Didn't we just buy it from you?

Actually, we haven't received the car from Jaipur. It is on a truck. It will be delivered first thing tomorrow morning.

Wednesday night:

Still, no payment sir.

[Call accounts, where is the payment, oh great, you got a second signature.]

Thursday:

Do you have the car? Do you have the check?

Don't worry about the check. We will work out something, as for the car...it has been detained outside the city. There are no trucks allowed in the city during business hours. Tomorrow, tomorrow.

Friday:

Tell me is the car on its way?

No, no sir, no payment.

Are you planning to sell me a car?

Of course.

[Calling accounts] Are you actually going to send payment?

Right now.

Friday night:

Where is the car?

Car? What car?

Saturday morning, at the dealership, in Delhi, with Sunil, our security guard-cum-driver in tow:

Hi, I want my car.

No problem. Here are the keys.

[Within seconds of pulling out, the car stalls, and we drive over a curb.]

Excuse me, Sunil, do you actually know how to drive?

Koi baat nahin (it doesn't matter, don't worry).

Saturday evening (the present):

Sunil, I am sorry, but you cannot be our driver.

Koi baat nahin.

In our driveway, our new car is parked, like a ghost in time for Halloween. The power is out. The single lamp from the kitchen haunting it from above. I kind of drove it around the block. My rusty standard transmission skills seems good enough, but the left side of the road is disorienting.

Steeped in the long tradition of women with an excess of time and milk, I am no longer satisfied with merely making cheese and curd and buttermilk. I am not sure if I need increasingly complex recipes or maybe just those that take a very long time. Either way, I need more practice. The ghee was burnt and the khoya was runny. The car sits there. Even after hours and hours of agitation, after constantly moving, even while standing in place, I see that neither patience nor will are enough to turn circles into spirals, to turn milk into manna.