Kumari doesn't need to set an alarm. The muezzin's long and shaky call over the microphone for the pre-dawn namaz is enough to wake her up. The old man's voice, already sombre and anaemic at its origin, is even fainter when it has crossed several streets and reached here. The other four times he gives the azaan, every time in the same tune, she can't help wondering how such a frail voice can manage to get her up. But last night she had a dream that they'd built upon the wide front yard a huge house falling just short of being called a mansion. And that she had in her bureau the likes of the brinjal-coloured silk saree she had seen at the shop but hadn't quite liked the price. The dream stirred her awake when it was three or four o'clock and she hasn't had a wink since. She's been enjoying the sweet after-taste of good dreams.

At the old man's call she shakes her husband Ravi awake, taking care not to wake their sleeping daughter, snug and ensconced between them.

Outside, in the light fog and chill of October, her husband splashes some cold water on his face directly from the vat. Chewing on a neem twig he sets out on his way to their field, a spade on his shoulder.

Inside the shed Rani and Gauri have been up a long time, making do with mouthfuls of the bland and chewy straw that lays before them. They're waiting for their delicious breakfast their owner will serve them once she's done with her business in the shed. First she will boil some millets in a lot of water. When the millets get soft she will throw in the main ingredient in generous handfuls. This sweet ingredient, which is nothing but the residue of copra after its oil has been extracted, has been Rani's most favourite food ever since he's been able to chew.

On very rare occasions when the old muezzin's call doesn't help, it falls to them to get their owner up with their growls and bellows.

The tube-light that illuminates the shed has its switch on the verandah. Kumari turns it on. The cattle, as usual, are on all fours when she sees them in the shed. Rani, still chewing on the straw, greets Kumari by nodding his head. Kumari caresses his head gently.

'Hey young man! How's the night been?' she asks. But Rani wants his breakfast soon. He sniffs at her hand and starts licking it.

Last year when pregnant Gauri was expecting her baby anytime, one evening they got Rajesh, the local veterinary quack, to put her through a final check-up. After the thorough inspection that involved sticking almost the whole length of his arm into Gauri's behind multiple times, he declared, 'Uterine torsion.'

There was no way this medical term would've rung any bells with Kumari or her husband, both of whom have only gone as far as 7th standard, that too in Telugu medium. So the compounder proudly cleared his throat and explained that Gauri had her uterus twisted.

'I'm afraid she won't be able to deliver. So no chance of the baby's survival either,' he said.

That night only Latha ate dinner. That's because they didn't tell her. That night was the longest one of their lives. Sleep kept evading them. Her husband was so restless through the night that he kept visiting Gauri at the slightest noise from the shed. The grief that swamped their hearts wasn't so much for financial loss as for the prospect of loss of a member of their family.

Next morning Ravi set out for the govt veterinary hospital on his bike. The hospital is located in the town about half an hour's journey away from where they live. It was three o'clock in the evening when he came back with two doctors. Neither of the doctors looked above thirty to her. Nor did they dress like the typical doctors do - white coat over, stethoscope slung around the neck. In clean ironed shirts and pants they did look educated but not in the least look like doctors.

Gauri was brought out of the shed. The young doctors also went about their diagnosis on Gauri. One of them, who was taller, who she thought to be the senior of the two, said they needed a wooden plank and a few lengths of strong rope. They fastened Gauri's front legs together. And then her hind legs too. Gauri got exasperated at the harassment at one point and grew wild thrashing her head about. It took some time and a lot of strength to topple her. The taller one pressed the plank on Gauri's belly while Ravi and the other doctor rolled Gauri over a number of times, with brief checks in between. Everytime they rolled her Gauri bellowed and opened her eyes wide. That kept Kumari on edge throughout. She was sweating all over even though all she did was stand on the verandah and see the doctors do what must've been very usual for them.

Latha was back from school before they were done. She thought Gauri had delivered.

She asked, 'Amma, is it a boy or a girl? Where is he or she hiding?'

'We don't know yet, dear. But we will soon. Go change over.'

'She's all right now,' the taller doctor said when they were finished. He gave his number to call in the event of any complications during labour. Two days later Gauri delivered a healthy male calf. Kumari made coconut laddus to celebrate. She packed some laddus and some colostrum milk for the doctors when Ravi went to the hospital to thank them personally.

The new-born calf pranced around the front yard in celebration of life. He brought back joy to the house. He looked so beautiful with his glassy eyes and jet black body that Latha, their daughter, named him Rani.

'Shouldn't we give him a male name, dear? Raja, perhaps?' Kumari said.

'But he's so beautiful.'

'But a Raja can be beautiful too, right?'

But Latha wouldn't listen. She thought Rani was apt.

'No no, Rani is supposed to be beautiful. Raja must be strong and brave, but not beautiful.'

That was how Rani, despite being a male calf, got the name. He even won this year's calves' beauty contest, beating thirty others from the ten surrounding villages of the panchayat. The panchayat president hung around Rani's neck a gold-plated bell and handed his custodian(Latha's father) the prize money of two thousand rupees. After the contest many came from far and near and offered to buy him at prices so high that they were tempted once. It took a whole day's sulking on Latha's part to turn down the offers. All this glory brought with it a little bit of suffering too. He would hardly touch food or water and had diarrhea. Someone had cast their evil eye on him. They had a hard time protecting him from the eyes of the curious. It took him three days to get back on track.

Kumari has a lot of work to do. The musings are delicious but time is limited. She has milk deliveries to do. Without wasting any further time she plunges herself into her early morning routine. First she cleans up the mess on the floor Rani and Gauri made through the night. Grabbing a clump of straw from the stack just in front of the shed, she transfers the soft lumps of dung onto a basket reserved for just that purpose. Now this mix of straw and dung joins the months-old heap right behind the shed. By the time next crop season comes, this heap will turn into nothing short of gold both in terms of fertilizing properties it gives the soil and with respect to its price they will quote if you don't have cattle at home and you must buy it before you sow seeds on your field. Her husband told her once that some well-to-do farmer in some village even paid a shepherd to camp sheep at night in their fields over a month or so before the tilling season. The shepherd would shift their sheep's sleeping spot every few days so they could cover the entire field at the end of the time agreed on. This to her is a completely new concept of fertilizing a land. She wondered why this idea didn't catch on in this part. Perhaps it turned out to be a challenging task for the shepherd. In any case, even the shepherd must've been amazed at how his sheep's shit also proved worthwhile.

All right. Clean-up is done. Now the main task. Kumari splashes water on Gauri's teats and cleans them well. She then squats next to her and, holding the usual steel container between her knees, starts milking her. Two teats at a time, one with left hand, one with right. Jets squirting out of the teats patter the empty container at first, sounding much like the electric bell at Latha's school. When enough milk has accumulated in the container, it starts burbling. As a result there's a white mound of froth over the container's mouth when Kumari is done milking.

***

Latha gets out of the wooden gates of their yard and is on the road, rubbing her bleary eyes. Hanging from the other hand is a can full of milk on its way to Fatima's Aunty's house. What they have here in the name of road is a path heightened with a mix of red soil and large chips. Each chip is as large as a cricket ball, although not as round. All these years of rainfall and wear has left it bumpy and with the chips sticking out of the soil. Walk on this road without your chappals on and you won't need to go to school for two days. Two of her classmates are coming back from morning tuition. She waved at them. They waved back.

'See you at school,' she says. She used to go to tuitions too. Morning from six to seven and evening from five to six. School is fun but tuitions are not. Luckily her parents thought she was being overburdened at such a young age and let her do her studying at home.

That reminds her, she hasn't done her homework yet. She had all of yesterday to do it. Today is Monday. She curses herself for not having done with the headache Saturday itself. She must get the homework done as soon as she gets back home. She will try to finish it all but she must prioritise Hindi because that's what her first period is going to be. The rest she could manage to copy off her classmates' notebooks during Hindi period. But first she will try to get it all done at home so she won't miss out on the chit-chat at school with her friends in all the stress to get the homework done.

As her eyes fall on the high wooden table in front of the kirana store at the turn, she forgets everything else. The table is lined with glass jars full of different sweets. There's her favourite Kaja too. Oh the juicy syrupy taste of it! She could eat a whole jar of them. Her body moves ahead but her eyes can't let the jar go. She knows now what she'll do with the rupee her mother gives her when it's school time. Once this milk is delivered she will rush home and -

Her eyes can't see the pothole coming up.

Thrown off balance, she lurches forward as if somebody has pushed her from behind, her slippers stamping the ground in an attempt to steady herself.

'Phew! Almost fell down,' she says to herself. And then it strikes her like lightning that her hand has been holding the handle of the milk can. The can's lid has flown off and the spilled milk has made a wet patch on the road. The can's round exterior is streaked and beads of milk have collected around its bottom edge, ready to fall at a stir.

'Oh God, what have I done!' she cries.

When she looks at the milk, her quantitative judgement assures her that everything is fine, not much is spilled.

'Aunty will hardly notice,' she reassures herself.

And she feels better. She mops the can clean with the end of her gown and is on her way to deliver and quickly be home for tea and breakfast. The sweets and the strain have made her a little peckish.

***

Inside Fatima's kitchen, the decoction is boiling. Steam leaps from it and a sweet smell pervades the kitchen and hall. A smell no longer raw and bitter, still not ready to drink, but ready to add milk to it. Once milk is added, let the it turn to a light brown, the brown of puddles on the road during monsoon.

The first thing Fatima did when she got up was to put on the stove water, tea leaves, and a block of jaggery in the tea pot. Jaggery that doesn't coagulate the milk, she has to remind the grocer every time just to be sure. As it gently simmered, she languidly swept the floor of the kitchen, hall and veranda, waiting for the milk.

A cup of tea will drive sleep out of her system, and she will be all energy again for the rest of the morning. She has to race through her morning chores: dish washing, breakfast preparation, readying children for school, sending husband off to work, with lunch boxes in all three's hands, before the tea's effect wears off and a faint hint of hunger blooms inside her which she will satiate with a light breakfast before getting on with the next chore in the line-up.

Her husband too wants tea first thing in the morning once he comes back from the mosque. The children often insist but are mostly denied.

'It's for grownups, you know. You can have it when you are as tall as Father,' she says to them.

She is waiting with a steel pot in hand at the gate. Droplets of dew have settled on the red-painted shafts of the metal gate. She feels a little chilly. Time to take out all the winter clothes and linen, she makes a mental note.

When she sees Latha approaching she says in a cheerful voice,'You woke up early today? Good girl.'

Tittering at the compliment, Latha pours the milk into Fatima aunty's pot.

'Why, it cannot be one litre!' Fatima mumbles looking at the milk, more to herself than to Latha.

Latha's heart leaps up her throat. Aunty has noticed after all. 'God, I'm dead,' she thinks. Now she feels she he owes an explanation to Aunty. In all the consternation only one explanation strikes her. And she blurts it out without a second thought.

'Mother must've forgotten to add water,' she says, and instantly regrets it.

Fatima takes some time to get it. When she gets it she breaks into a gentle laughter. Not that she doesn't know that. Fatima herself grew up in a home with cattle. Her mother too used to add a little water. Not too much, though.

'Back-breaking work to take care of these black beauties,' her mother used to say.

'So that's your excuse,' Fatima teased her mother once, 'but what will you say if someone finds out?'

She winked at Fatima and said,'I would say, Perhaps the buffalo's drinking too much water. And promise to check her water intake from now on.'

She wonders what her mother must be doing now. Most likely, delivering milk to her consumers. As a child that job was hers, like it's the little girl Latha's now. She must call her up. It's going to be just an audio call, though. If only her parents knew how to operate a smartphone. She must talk to her husband about visiting her parents this weekend.

***

On the way back home Latha has been debating with herself if it will be wise to tell Mother everything.

'No no, I won't tell anything,' she thinks. She'll get a good beating for sure for such a foolish act, no doubt about it.

But then Aunty is sure to tell on her when Mother goes to her house tomorrow morning. That way the thrashing would postpone to tomorrow, which will make today even more miserable with apprehension and anticipation.

'No no, I must tell and be done with the beating,' she thinks. She'll cry a little, or maybe a lot but it'll be over. Besides she'll get a chance to sulk and refuse to eat and ask for that doll she liked in the bazaar.