How did the people from the olden days keep milk fresh and not spoilt?

 I grew up in south india (Chennai) in the 1980’s. We lived in a tiled roof house that was 170+ years old. The walls were made of clay and calcium and our drainage at best, was cosmetic.

Chennai summers

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 are brutal and humidity is high. Not to mention, cleanliness in the kitchen is impossible. We prevailed and we were a happy lower middle class joint family of 13 living on the salary of 1, my father.

Milk was purchased from the local milk vendor (Aavin

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) at 4.30 AM in the morning, by my grandfather or one of my aunts from a place that looked much worse, than this…

Image Source: Aavin Milk Booth

The only way to keep milk fresh till the evening was to cover it with a lid, keep it constantly heated up, once every few hours and also to use it up every day and never have left overs. If we did have left overs, we made curd

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 out of the milk to prevent it from getting spoiled.

As the eldest child in the house, much to the wrath of my grandparents and other women in the house, who took severe offence at a “male child” being in the kitchen, (thanks to the 80’s internalised misogyny of our women in those times) i used to take an interest in all things cooking and kitchen related.

I used to warm up the milk, sweep the floors, pre-heat the food in the evening after i came back from school, so that it remained fresh till dinner time, at 7.30 PM.