Kurien, staggering out of the dusty and rugged railway station with his luggage, gazed at the spools of dust and the dilapidated stone building before him as he got out. The station was small and almost in ruins. He could see a few turbaned shepherds grazing their cattle in the distance. Everything about this place felt different and strange. Anand was a small village. He put his luggage down and gazed at the Gujarati vendors on his left side, dressed in traditional attires, selling tea and dhoklas to a few passengers descending from another train. Kurien was in a daze and lost in thoughts, and he heard someone calling out his name from behind. He turned his head to see two men hurrying towards him.

One of them was Kodandapani, the research creamery’s caretaker, accompanied by a short, thin man, popularly known as ‘Barot Kaka’. Barot Kaka, on seeing Kurien, flashed a smile at him and extended his hands to take hold of the luggage. Kurien shook his head and politely rejected, saying, ‘No, no. I’d carry them myself.’ But Kaka would hear nothing of it and snatched all the luggage from Kurien.

Kurien shrugged his shoulders, smoothed his dishevelled hair, and kept checking the time. Kodandapani, almost bursting with joy, thought to himself, ‘Thank God, Kurien is here! Now I can return to Bangalore on the next available train. Anand has just tired me out!’

While they were still talking to Kurien, he started walking in search of a parked vehicle that he assumed they had come in to pick him up. Instead, he saw a bullock cart with two handsome bulls swishing their tails, waiting for them. Barot Kaka threw the luggage in and jumped into the driver’s seat. A perplexed Kurien clambered into the cart, and the cart carriage lurched forward. Kodandapani also hopped in, winking at him. Kurien asked the bullocky to take them straight to the research creamery. That was Kurien’s first rickety, bone-rattling ride to take them to the neglected research creamery under the National Dairy Research Institute.

Kurien kept ironing out his wrinkled shirt with his palm, and there was dirt on his pants which he probably got from the long journey on the train. His hair was also caked with dirt and looked shabby. Kodandapani took a good look at Kurien. ‘You need to rest first,’ he warned Kurien, adding an afterthought, ‘Today is Friday the 13th. Don’t start your new duty on an unlucky day. Why don’t you wait a day more and join tomorrow?’

Kurien frowned, shook his head, and said, ‘No. I don’t like what I see here. Let me take charge today and allow things to go wrong. I’m not interested in staying here too long.’

Riding in the bullock cart was new for Kurien, and his entire body started rattling at the same time simultaneously. He frowned and sweated profusely, though it was early winter. The trees were bare, and the path deserted. There was not even a shop in the vicinity. This was worse than he had imagined. He couldn’t see a single automobile, and people were walking or hitchhiking on bullock carts. Most of them chattered away in either Hindi or Gujarati; they gaped when they heard English. Everything about Anand made him miss the thriving New York nights. He closed his eyes and tried to erase the memory of the roaring automobiles that passed through the crowded streets in America. His heart skipped a beat when he thought of his friends and the lively parties all night, laughing and enjoying themselves.

Picture courtesy: Ministry of Railways/Wikimedia Commons.

Kurien took a deep breath and was determined to fit in, though he knew it was not an easy task. To make matters worse, he was a non-vegetarian and a Christian. The people of Anand stared at the young gentleman who came to their village with strange and foreign habits, and they stifled a laugh. Some also went to the extent that they were reluctant to rent him a house. He went knocking at every door to find suitable accommodation. Barot Kaka also tried talking to the villagers in favour of his boss. The villagers averted their heads and barely acknowledged him. It bothered him that they could hardly accept him as part of their lives. Moreover, him being a Malayali bachelor added to his woes. In 1949, the orthodox and vegetarian Gujarati community was too prejudiced to welcome an outsider like him.

Finally, Kurien managed to rent an untended garage owned by the research creamery’s superintendent. The garage was next to the creamery. It was a dingy place with no windows or bathrooms. To top it all, the floor had a pit filled with grease. Kurien thought to himself; perhaps the hole would have been used by the mechanics to stand and repair the car. He gritted his teeth in frustration, but suddenly, the engineer in him awakened, wasting no time. Soon he made a temporary bathroom by partitioning the room with a piece of canvas. He burrowed a hole and made windows on the wall. He threw some mud into the grease pit and levelled the ground. Kurien was all ablaze. This zest in Kurien to solve anything life throws at him led him a long way in the future.

[Niyogi Books has given Fair Observer permission to publish this excerpt from Verghese Kurien: The Man Who Brought Milk to a Million Homes, M. S. Meenakshi, Niyogi Books, 2024.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.