Ice cream!

Ice cream in its most basic form was all ice and no cream! The hawker had his cart strategically placed outside the school gates. He grated the ice-slab and stuffed the ice-flakes into an oblong mold. Once the shapely ice-form emerged, he stuck a handle to it. Dozens of mouth-watering syrup bottles lined the cart. He squirted some syrup on the ice-head and voilà, the “gola ice” for ready! He handed it over to the boy, whose face lit up with a smile! Once you sucked the syrup off, it was bland ice. In his best mood, the hawker allowed a refill of additional syrup droplets. At other times, he shooed the boy away as though a pesky irritant!

For your child of 4 years, the height of temptation was going past an ice cream shop. Till then, it held your fingers gently. And now, it overpowered and dragged you with the ferocity of an Alsatian on a leash! You succumbed to the pressure and bought the ice cream. The “orange-stick-ice-cream” was at the lowest end of the spectrum. Next in the grade was the “choco-bar”, with its chocolate crust and milk filling. The child relished it- ice cream smeared on the nose tip and with a trickle down the dress as well! Stick ice creams were unstable. If the licks were clustered to one side, the ice cream lost balance and fell off! You braced yourself for a second round of hysterical bawling, at which point you made a hasty exit!

For growing siblings, the sole purpose of their existence was to needle the other! Any arsenal in the armory was fair game, even an ice cream cone! One of them held on to the cone untouched, until the other finished his. And now, with cone in hand, he savored it with greater interest, provoking the other sibling to no end! With an ice cream cone, you were on quicksand, if you held it for too long. It leaked and collapsed; you lost both the ice cream and your face! And then, there were times, when the other sibling, in one swift move, yanked the cone off and swallowed it in full, resulting in a full-scale fratricidal skirmish!

Ice creams have come a long way and are now a full-fledged meal. The "3-scoop sundae", with dollops of ice cream and garnished with pistachio is a foodie’s delight. And once you add whipped cream, hot fudge, and cherries, you take it to another level. Frigid countries of the West may boast of more flavors and perhaps a better ambience. But only the one baked in the Indian summer sun, can truly understand the joy in an ice cream!