Parvathi Milk Center

Our milk center is located at house 2-100 in Narayanapuram, right near the Kotha Thanda area. The day starts here long before most people are even awake, usually when the first milk cans start arriving on the backs of cycles or small carts. We spend our mornings pouring milk into the large drums and checking the quality with a small glass tool. Kuravi is a place where many people keep cows, so there is always a steady flow of people coming in. The floor is usually a bit wet from cleaning the equipment, and the whole place has that specific smell of fresh dairy. We keep a large ledger on a wooden desk where we mark down how many liters each person brings. Sometimes the cooling unit makes a loud buzzing noise that we’ve just gotten used to over the years. We sell the milk to the families nearby who come with their own steel jugs, and the rest goes to the big truck that stops by later in the morning. It’s a simple routine that hasn't changed much since we started. My clothes usually have a few white splashes on them by the time we finish the morning shift. We don’t have a fancy shopfront, just the open door and the rows of empty cans waiting to be washed. It’s practical work that keeps us connected to all the farmers in the local area.