Verghese Kurien

MILK, and butter for that matter, are sacred substances in Hindu India. They make up daily offerings, and milk washes the feet of household gods. Newly married couples compete to fish for the ring in a bowl of milk. The god Krishna, as a child, stole butter from the household crocks. Within the primordial Ocean of Milk lay the nectar of immortality.

Verghese Kurien had no reverence for it particularly, nor for the cattle that produced it. He was born a Christian, became an atheist, ate beef, and liked a drink—but not milk. In fact, he actively disliked it. He never meant to go into dairying, either. The government pushed him into it when he went, as a gifted student, for a metallurgy scholarship, and ended up answering a trick question about pasteurisation. (“Er…something to do with milk?”) To fulfil the scholarship conditions he went to work in the run-down Government Research Creamery in dust-filled Anand in Gujarat, where the machinery kept breaking down: hating the place, hating the life, hating that ever-curdling white stuff.