Billing for your dairy in Assam
Milk by the litre, curd by the pot and the tea stall's weekly account, on one phone.
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The eve of Magh Bihu, the Bhogali morning's curd and the quiet week after
The Uruka evening, when the whole lane wants curd at sunset
On the eve of Magh Bihu the lanes cook a feast in the open, and everyone wants curd and milk at the same hour for the morning's chira and doi. The counter is three deep, one person asks for paneer, another for a bigger pot, and the number of pots you have set aside is only in your head. By dark you are out of curd and have turned away people you know.
The Bhogali morning: chira, curd and jaggery before the sun is up
The day after the feast the breakfast is flattened rice with thick curd and jaggery, and the lane is up early for it. The first customers want the curd set from the night before, the later ones are told it is finished, and an old woman who was promised a pot is looking at your shutter. You promised too many and wrote none.
The quiet week after Bihu, with the pots still on the shelf
After the feast the lane has had enough curd and paneer to last, and the orders stop. You made for the crowd of the week before, and the shelf now holds pots that will not wait. You cannot say how many to make for the quiet week, because nobody wrote down how many went on each day of the busy one.
From the Uruka evening's list to the old woman's pot and the week after the feast
The pots set aside and the pots collected, read on the Uruka night
Each family is billed as it collects its pot on the evening. At closing the pots still on your list belong to families that never came, and that number tells you how many to set aside next year, so you turn fewer people away at dusk and are left with fewer pots at night.
The old woman's pot, promised on the page and set aside at night
Put each promised pot on the family's name when it is promised, with its day. At closing you read the list and set those pots aside first, so the early customers of the Bhogali morning take what is left and the promise made the evening before is kept at dawn.
The quiet week's pots, counted each evening after Bihu
After the feast, some pots will not wait on the shelf. Each evening read what is left of the curd and of the paneer, and make less of the curd first, because it turns sour sooner. Keep making the paneer a few days longer, and the shelf comes down to the lane's real need.
Tools for a counter of loose milk, packets, curd and paneer
Online orders
The Uruka evening's lists arriving from your shop page and waiting on your phone, so the curd pots are set aside before sunset.
Credit book (khata)
A page for each family with its promised pots on it and the day, so the Bhogali morning's first customers take what is left.
Daily reports
Each day of the feast kept in order, curd, paneer and milk on their own lines, to be read on the Monday after.
Jute, tea and paddy: what the districts around an Assam dairy earn
A dairy sells to the farms, the estates and the towns around it. A few districts of Assam, and what their people earn from.
- Nagaon is one of Assam's main jute-producing districts, and the Assam Co-operative Jute Mills, the country's only co-operative jute mill, is at Silghat in Nagaon.
- Cachar is known for its tea plantations; paddy, vegetables, pulses and tea are grown on the plains along the Barak river.
- Dhubri depends mainly on agriculture and forest products; paddy is the main income and jute and mustard seed are the major cash crops.
What Assam dairies ask about the Uruka evening, Bhogali curd and paneer for the feast
On the Uruka evening I cannot stand and write. How do I set aside each family's curd?
Share your online shop page before the feast. Each family sends its list from it, so you see every pot on your phone, and you set them aside in the order they came.
A family that asked for pots on the Uruka evening never came. What do I do with the pots set aside for it?
At nine, open the list and see which pots were not collected. Sell those to the next in the lane on a fresh bill, and leave the absent family's page as it is, so it can still collect at dawn.
The online list for the eve asks for more paneer kilos than I have cut. How do I see it before I say yes?
Open the paneer's count when the list comes in. If the kilos on the list are more than the block holds, tell the family before sunset what you can give, so its eve is not decided at the door.
Purabi, Magh Bihu and the Guwahati milk counter
Around Magh Bihu 2022, Purabi Dairy's paneer sales in Guwahati grew 35 percent and its curd products grew 18 percent over the year before. The festival week moves paneer and curd faster than milk, and a dairy counter feels that in its own pots.
Purabi, Assam's largest dairy cooperative brand run by WAMUL, was reported to hold over 40 percent of the Guwahati market in January 2022. A dairy that sells its packets, and its own loose milk next to them, keeps the two on separate lines so that it knows what the counter really sells.