I have always lived in a hot place. I mean, Bombay of my childhood, though much cooler than it is now, was always wavering between, hot, hotter and hottest. Respite came once mid-year when the skies burst open during the monsoon, barely to double back to a blistering October.
Only when the year started winding down towards Diwali and Christmas did our cardigans and sweaters emerge from the mothballs. Otherwise, life was scorching, humid and blistering.
Everyone carried a water-bottle, the slightly pampered used a thermos flask that kept the water cold for long. I’d freeze my water bottle in the night and carry it rock-solid to school. By the afternoon the ice melted but the water still remained cold, if not glacial. But as we grew older and more aware of ourselves, carrying a water bottle was considered a bit “namby-pamby”?
Though extremely pragmatic, for a teenage boy to be slinging a water bottle along, was positively detrimental to image and myth. Cold water in those “pre-Bisleri” days was available on the road and was dispensed out of large square aluminum insulated tanks, mounted on top of a bicycle.
The grimy young fellow who sold cold water on a hot day could be found everywhere. The bicycle-mounted tank had a plunger and a U-shaped tap on top. Metal tumblers to drink the water were chained to the tank. For 10 paise you’d be able to drink one cold glass of water, that is when a bottle of mineral water which cost Rs 10 was way beyond the reach of anybody except the extremely wealthy.
This water was like nectar when the sun burned down on a hot sultry day as long you did not try and find out where that water came from, and what was its source. It may as have come from a municipal tap or maybe even from the gutter. Who knows?
The other unhygienic drink that was just so refreshing and glorious on a hot day was sugarcane juice. There was a sugarcane juice fellow on every pavement. At any given time, there would be a crowd around his stall. Long sugarcane stored in a squalid cart, shamelessly crushed in your presence in the most unsanitary surroundings with unprotected pieces of lemon and ginger, poured in sticky, unwashed utensils, a grist of flies buzzing around the sweet juice, maybe even getting squished between the canes.
The man would feed long canes into two iron crushing rollers, which had bells attached to them. With the cane, he would feed in bits of ginger. The pealing bells heralded the green juice as it emerged from between the crusher and into a grimy steel vessel.
Once enough was collected, the juice with a frothy head was poured over pieces of ice (source unknown) and served in used carelessly rinsed tall glasses. Nothing tasted better than “ganne ka ras” or sugarcane juice on a hot summer day.
Now from the plebian straight to the elite. Many summers holidays were spent lounging on the poolside at The Willingdon Club. It’s great to be in the water on a hot day and then bask around on a deck-chair and order cooling drinks. I wasn’t old enough yet to be able to guzzle cold lager, but an “ice cream float” was legitimate.
Let me try and explain what an ice cream float is. An ice cream float or ice cream soda (as it is called in the United States), is a chilled flavoured drink poured over a scoop of ice-cream in a tall glass. My favourite was always the Coca-Cola Float. A cold Coke poured into a glass full of vanilla ice-cream. The liquid already carbonated, rises to the top of the glass as a creamy froth bringing along the whip of the ice-cream.
You periodically keep adding the remainder of the drink in the bottle as you sip through the float. You can change the favours to your own whim. You could do a vanilla-ice cream and orangeade or lemonade. Strawberry ice cream with a fizzy raspberry drink. Or maybe even a beer with ice-cream of your choice!
If I was to go indigenous, the “chaas” is probably the healthiest summer drink you can have. I have always preferred “lassi” to “chaas” but I learned about the benefits of chaas only after I got addicted to sweet lassi. Not the kind of sweet lassi that comes lavished with dry-fruit, flavoured with saffron and topped with cream. Just a simple plain sweet, thin lassi which is churned so hard that it froths on the top and can be gulped down as a refreshing liquid and not as a diluted shrikhand.
After having consumed lassi by the glassfuls, I discovered the chaas. Supremely healthy, cooling and digestive, chaas is made by churning yogurt and cold water without any sugar. In fact, it is often spiked with salt, green chillies, coriander, asafoetida and jeera. Often chaas is made from yogurt that is a few days old and has turned slightly sour. You can literally down glasses and glasses of ‘chaas’ without any adverse effect on weight or well-being.
There are so many summer drinks that are common in so many parts of the country. In the mango season, it’s aam panna, made from raw mango pulp and sugar and blended with cardamom and nutmeg. Then there is the street-side kala-khatta with tonnes of black salt. Or sattu ka sharbat, made from roasted gram powder, chilled water, with or without sugar.
Then there is jal jeera, cumin seeds roasted and made into and mixed in water with crushed coriander and chillies. In Madurai and other parts of the south, they make Jigarthanda, it’s a milk-based drink mixed with nannari (Sarasaparilla) root syrup.
Maharashtra is famous for its kokum sherbet. Found along the Konkan and Malabar coast, kokum is a sour summer fruit. Mixed with sugar syrup, this is a bright pinkish-red, sweet and sour drink that is refreshing when chilled.
There is a whole world out there when it comes to local Indian drinks, but my absolute favourite summer drink, is a milky pink liquid, we call “doodh cold drink”. It’s half a glass of rose sherbet, made with water and Rooh Afzah, and half a glass of milk, chilled in ice. You try it, and tell me if I am wrong.
Kunal Vijayakar is a food writer based in Mumbai. He tweets @kunalvijayakar and can be followed on Instagram @kunalvijayakar. His YouTube channel is called Khaane Mein Kya Hai. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent the stand of this publication.
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