Milk Sister
Ammu used to call her Paalechi ("milk sister"). Paal is milk and chechi is sister. Chechi gets shortened to echi in a loving way. Ammu thinks her name was Kamala, though she is not sure about it. So she was Paalechi, always their Paalechi. She used to deliver milk twice daily to the houses in the neighborhood. She had few cows at her home and she used to milk the cows and sell the milk. This was her livelihood. She used to have 2 bags to cary the milk bottles, one in each hand. One of those was a plastic basket and other was a cloth bag. The jars were clear glass with metal/plastic lids. Every day when she delivered milk, it was either Ammu's duty her sister's duty to bring the bottle inside, pour the milk in to a container, clean her bottle and bring it back to her. This used to take few minutes. So, every other day (when it was not Ammu's duty), Ammu used to sit on the front step to chat with Paalechi. She usually sat in the step below Ammu and used to r...