Stuck in bad traffic on Delhi’s inner Ring road, my eyes fell upon an advertisement for a new cold drink. It declared that the drink tasted just like a home-made one. For the next 15 minutes, while our car stood next to that billboard, I stewed over the irony of it all. The country, with one of the largest repertoires of traditional coolers, is today one of the world’s biggest markets for packaged soft drinks! Maybe it was the irritation of being in such lousy traffic, or it was my parched throat, but I just couldn’t stop remembering the wonderful sharbats I’d had in the summers in my youth.
Sharbats, simply sugar syrup mixed with flower essence or fruit juice, were first popularised by the Mughal kings. They say that one of them actually used to get consignments of ice from the Himalayas to ensure that the drinks he had in the summer were suitably chilled.... Sitting in my car that day, I thought longingly of the green coolness of khus sharbat. Made from an extract of vetiver, a type of grass with an aromatic root, this wonderful drink cools both body and mind. Its essential oil, also called the “oil of tranquillity”, was certainly something many of the motorists around me could use to calm their tempers! Not long ago, when I went to a village near Mirzapur, I noticed that people often added a muslin-wrapped packet of khus to their earthenware pots of drinking water. It imparted a mild aroma to the water, already scented by the pot itself.
Another fragrant drink made with essence of rose used to be synonymous with summers of yore. Till a couple of decades ago, rose petals gathered at dawn (when they released the maximum perfume) were steeped overnight in pitchers of water, cooked to a syrup and served chilled with water or milk. Like other summer coolers, this aids digestion and cools the system. A variant — a delicious mixture of raisin juice (made by boiling a handful of raisins) and rose extract — that I remember from childhood, is great for bringing down stubborn fevers.
As the traffic began inching forward, I remembered another favourite drink, which was made from phalsa. An infusion of these tiny dark fruits yields a tasty drink with astringent and cooling properties. My grandmother also used to swear by bael as an efficient heat buster and as a remedy for all sorts of stomach- and heat-related disorders. She’d crack its hard cover, scoop the aromatic flesh, mash it with sugar and strain the extract with lots of chilled water. It was not until later that I saw bael being used very differently in UP’s villages. Its soapy texture made it a good detergent, and some even added its pulp to wet clay to make a wall glaze!
Glaring balefully at all the soft drink ads on the way, I finally made it home. For if it weren’t for the convenience of bottled drinks, many of us would still have been making these lovely sharbats at home.
I opened the fridge for a bottle of water, and there lay some mango panna, the uncrowned king of summer coolers. “I’d made some with mangoes and fresh mint, and thought you might enjoy a bottle in this heat,” said my mother. I drank it gratefully, happy to find that my sharbat ruminations had come to a happy conclusion.
That day, I stopped the old man who sold phalse in a small basket, and set them to steep in water. Soon, we were enjoying glasses of tangy pink juice. “Let’s have this everyday,” the kids said, “It’s better than fizzy drinks!” Maybe there is hope for sharbats after all.