COOLDRINKS FOR HOT AFTERNOONS: The Abandoned Husband's Guide to Survival.

26.04.2014

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COOLDRINKS FOR HOT AFTERNOONS:

During my years as a Market Researcher in the 1980s, I had the opportunity to travel and do “sight-seeing” in Orissa. I was travelling with my friend and drummer, Prem Naidu. It was a hot summer and we had, in the heat, got down from a train at Puri Road. The connecting transport to Puri and the Jagganath Temple was a Tempo Trax – with two dozen passengers – only half human. After a  half hour ride as picturesque as it was painful, hanging on between two goats, we reached Puri – famished.

But when we went around the only food available was – PURIS. And that too, with a spicy playa made from pumpkins, which only made us thirstier. Prem, with a deep phobia of water-borne sicknesses, drank only Coke (Or Pepsi, probably Thums Up or Campa Cola). Conditioned by many years of travelling all the remotest rural areas, I could drink anything and was happy with Sugar Cane Juice – a sure thing across most of India. With the cane crusher mounted on a rickety push cart, the cane juice seller would have a young kid well below the Child Labor Acts to crank the manually operated crusher. The juice, to which the crusher could add a slice of lemon or a sprig of ginger, ran down a sort of channel into the collecting jug. A million odd flies will be swarming around the gadget, the waste bagasse pile lying on the roadside and the stack of fresh sugar cane waiting to be crushed.

Flies are always there – vendors selling cut-fruits, Bajjis, jalebis and other food stuffs being prepared on the footpaths – all attract flies. And wherever these fly attracting food, fruit and beverage vendors ply their trade, you’re sure to find a rubbish or garbage dump close by.

After Puri, we went to Bubhaneswar, where the highlight was one of the Devadasi Temple Dancing Girls. She had come straight from the Temple Pond with a still wet thin sari clinging to her voluptuous figure.

Late afternoon we reached Konark, the Sun Temple fully covered with erotica. With only a remote village close by to the temple and very few shops, Prem just couldn’t find his Coke /Pepsi /Thums Up /Campa Cola anywhere around. We came across yet another vendor of summer beverages. Instead of the Sugar Cane Crusher, he had a large earthen Pot with a red damp cloth tied around it. He also had a unique Ice-Crusher, which was just a carpenter’s wood plane fixed face side up. With each glass, he would take a block of ice from inside a pile of sawdust and scrape it on the plane to get a handful of crushed ice. I expected it to be “Jal Jeera” another beverage of the rural proletariat’s natural choice.

“Kya Hai? What is it?” I asked the Vendor.

“Ram Ras”, the man replied. Literally meaning the “Juice of Shri Ram”, this is a poor man’s beverage made with Jaggery, Green Mangos, Mint, herbs and spices.

“Is mein kya hai? What is in this Juice?” I asked.

“Is mein Bhang Hai, saab,” replied the man.

Prem, had meanwhile, been muttering away “Look at the flies… I won’t drink this… Vile stuff!...  Land up with cholera or something worse…”, but when he heard the man say “Bhang” (Cannabis / Marijuana), he stopped, dumbstruck.

“Well, now Prem,” I asked, “How many Glasses you want to drink?”

“About a dozen”, replied Prem thirstily gulping down the first glass.

Anybody can buy Coke or any packaged beverage and serve guests. Or make up a round of Squash, from a branded concentrate of a Soft Drink.

But here’s another Plus Point the ABANDONED HUSBAND can score and impress with his fast improving culinary expertise. More so,  since he took it up as a challenge. He can make up his own Summer Special Cooling Mock tail.

Devanahalli, a small sleepy town, miles north of Bangalore is a Historic Place. Birthplace of Tippu Sultan, with an old crumbling fort, Devanahalli is today very much on the International Map, with the Bangalore International Airport. Sadly this has also led to land sharks grabbing prime orchards around Devanahalli.

Devanhalli was famous for its “BUMBLIMAAS” Fruits, which supposedly grew on 300 year old trees. The Bumblimaas, also known as POMELOES to Anglo-Indians, is the largest of all citrus fruits – usually larger than a football. When peeled and crushed, it yielded a tartly sweet juice ideal to use in a soft drink. When we were young to say “BUMBLIMAAS” - something instantly deliciously wicked vaguely reminding me of a class mate we had nick-named “Big Bum”.

In Benson Town, Bangalore, my grandmother had grown a Bumblimaas tree and this gave a lot of fruit – it was the pink variety, the sweetest with its own special aroma.

“Paanagam” is the orthodox Tamil Brahmin beverage. On Fridays and Tuesdays, my grandmother offered it as “Neivedhiyam” for feeding the gods in her puja room. Also it was quite a hit with her “Bhajan Group” of local grandmothers who gathered on Tuesdays and Fridays for their Bhajan Singing Sessions. My aunt and I used to refer to this group as “Patti’s” (Grandmother’s) Rock Band.

 My grandmother’s recipe still helps me make up the best soft drink in town.

Take about 200 gms of jaggery, more, if you want a larger quantity. Put it into 2 cups of water. To this grind two cardamom pods and two cloves with a teaspoon of sugar in a pestle and mortar. Boil these together till the jiggery completely dissolves. Throw in a tiny crystal of “Cooking” or “Pachai Kalpooram” Camphor. This is a natural product. Do not use the burning camphor – used in Temples and Religious rituals, which is made from petroleum. When the jaggery solution cools down, add the juice from the Citrus Fruit. Throw in a few “Tulasi” (Holy Indian Basil) leaves and a sprig of “Pudhina” (Mint). Bumblimaas is an option pretty hard to find nowadays. So any citrine fruit will do. Lime, Lemons, Tangarines, Citrines, Oranges, etc.

Keep adding water, ice and tasting constantly till you get the right combination of sweetness and tanginess. But do this with your guests out of sight. Else they will snidely remark “Yechchai pannitu kudukaraan paar” “See he is polluting it and giving”.

You can add a few drops of “Rose Water Essence” and a pinch of Nutmeg Scrapings and it becomes palatable to Occidental Tongues.

The concoction can be further extended as a therapeutic drink. Adding Ginger – green or in its dehydrated form – “Sukku” makes for a good expectorant. Even a Green Chilly or powdered pepper and even a smallest pinch of rock salt or better, black salt, makes such a strong beverage that it will pick up any morning hangover after the “night before” of boozing.

Green Mangos – an alternative to citrus sources for sourness, tanginess and tartly are a very good alternative. Choose the mangoes which are still sour but may ripen soon for best affects. Cut the Green Mango into slices and boil it along with the Jaggery and other ingredients. However you may have to boil this a lot longer, till the mangos are cooked and you can press the pulp out with a “Presser”?! (The Tamil word is “Mathu” I can’t locate an English equivalent).

In fact, there are several fruits you can use to come up with a unique soft drink. Even Milk Whey water or sour curd can make life saving hydrators so essential in these hot summer months. Spiced Butter Milk, available all over south India, with all its spice and saltiness can quench your thirst better than any bottled Cola.

Passion Fruit, Wood Apple and Bilvam Fruits – these three seem to belong to one family, though Passion Fruits grow on a vine and the other two on huge forest trees. They all have a thick or hard skin with a pulpy interior, sometimes likened by my relatives to snot. But the Pulp can be scooped out and used to make a nice “Cool Drink”.

Passion fruit pulp is exotic and aromatic by itself, so just addition of Sugar or Jaggery gives it a complete taste. Wood Apple is rather very Tartly Sweet so all the other ingredients mentioned above can be used to give a nice refreshing round of Cool Drinks.

The “Bilvam” Tree is sacred to the Hindu God Shiva. In North India, it is quite common on the hot plains, while in South India, it is usually in Temples. The “Bilvam” bears a hard shelled fruit which grows bigger than a Cricket Ball and turns yellow on ripening. Occasionally, a ripe fruit will fall to the ground … my wife had discovered that the fruits which fell out of the tree by themselves were the sweetest and these are the ideal “sherbet” fruits.

In the 1970s, when I was in Allahabad, there was a “Bilvam” tree growing in our courtyard. My wife would wait, in the hottest summer, for the sound of a fruit falling and rush out before the neighbors did. It wouldn’t be long before we all had a refreshing Cool Drink.

One day, my wife had made a bottle of “Bilvam” Sherbeth for me to take to the office for a particularly hot afternoon. My cubicle was in a small room of a hundred year old British Bunglow, I shared it with two other colleges. I had placed the bottle, with its lid tightly screwed near the window. Unknown to us, the sherbet, rich with sugar and the ripening fruit had fermented till a huge pressure had built up in the bottle.

All of a sudden … SPLAT!!

The bottle exploded, the whole juice, now frothing flew in all directions. Every table was drenched, so too all three of us and every file was doused in a messy yellow orange paste which looked like baby’s poo….