This post is a part of Blogchatter Blog Hop.
It was a
beautiful day in May. The sun was shining bright, and a light breeze blew
through my open hair. My semester exams had just ended, and my mother and I
were on our way to our favourite kulfi place to eat some mango kulfi. It was my
after-exam treat, a tradition my parents had started after my UKG final exams.
I was in a good mood. My papers had gone well, and I was looking forward to an
evening of gossip, banter, and yummy food.
My mother and I
left the house around 5 p.m. I was dressed in a loose chikankari kurti, white
palazzo pants, and dainty, white sandals. We hailed an auto-rickshaw on the
street, the old fashioned way, and set off for the local BDA market. The auto
driver was an elderly man who was listening to devotional songs on the rickshaw
stereo, and muttering curse words under his breath. As we snaked through the
bumper-to-bumper Bangalore traffic, I was mentally strategizing what I would
eat that evening. Should I have samosa first and kulfi later? Or the other way
around? I usually preferred dessert first and snacks afterwards to undo the
sweet aftertaste in my mouth. I was also in the mood for pav bhaji, but it was
too hot a day for hot, hot pav and even hotter bhaji. Maybe I should stick to my
usual order of bhel puri and mango kulfi, I thought to myself. I could wash off
the sweet aftertaste with some masala lime soda.
As the auto
turned left at the intersection, I thought about the kulfi place we were going
to. It was a fairly recent discovery, that we had chanced upon a few months earlier,
while my mother and I were doing some evening shopping at the market. The kulfi
place was a little shop, a hole in the wall, with no indoor or outdoor seating.
It was run by a young Rajasthani couple, and as the lady packed jalebis for my
mother, the man offered me some kulfi to sample. One bite and I was hooked!
From that day on, the kulfi shop became one of our staple, must visit places
every time we went to the market. The traffic thinned, and my excitement and
hunger mounted as we got nearer to the market.
When we were
about a kilometre away from our destination, it started drizzling. “Mango
showers,” I said to my mother, and chuckled at how apt it was that we were
having mango showers while we were on our way to eat mango kulfi. Mango showers
are light, pre-monsoon rains that occur in South India. They rarely last for
more than ten minutes, and I expected the rains to subside by the time we
reached the market. But my mother was shaking her head no. “There’s a cyclone
in Tamil Nadu,” she said. Uh oh. That meant three to four days of continuous downpours
in Bangalore. For two people who prided themselves on being born and raised in Bangalore,
and hence intimately familiar with its rain patterns, how could we leave home
without our umbrellas and jackets? Within minutes, what I thought were mango
showers, turned into a terrible rainstorm, and we were caught in the middle of
it.
Some 500 metres
away from the market, the driver stopped the auto, and barked for us to get
out. He snatched the money from my mother’s hands, turned his auto around, and
drove away. My mother and I ran to the nearest shop, and sought shelter under
its awning with many others who just like us were stranded. My white palazzo
pants were covered in ugly, grey splotches and my white sandals were now brown.
We huddled under the narrow awning, our teeth chattering and our clothes
soaking wet. We waited like that for ten minutes, but the storm showed no signs
of subsiding. And that’s when I lost my cool.
“It’s not
fair!!!!” I whined. “I was so looking forward to eating kulfi and bhel puri.
This happens every time. I get excited about something, build it up in my head,
but then something happens, and my plans are ruined. The universe couldn’t give
me one day to let my hair down and eat some kulfi?” I went on and on like this
for five whole minutes, and when my mother couldn’t take it anymore, she
grabbed my hand and said, “Let’s go eat kulfi”.
“Huh?” I said,
sure that I had misheard her. Kulfi in this weather? “Why not?” my mother said,
her face beaming. “We are here anyway, might as well go eat some kulfi. Come
on, Sudeepta. It’s going to be an experience.” I considered it for a moment.
She was right, we were here anyway. There was something romantic about ice
cream in the rain, I supposed. And eating kulfi seemed like a better
alternative than huddling with strangers in front of a mobile repair shop. “Okay!”
I said, and two of us ran all the way to the kulfi shop.
By the time we
reached, the rain had decreased, and was now a steady drizzle. “Two mango
kulfis, please!” my mother said to the kulfi-man. “Kulfis, didi?” he asked but handed
them to us before we could change our minds. I’ll admit that the kulfis did not
taste as delicious as usual. My teeth were still chattering, and I looked (and
felt) gross in my wet, rain soaked clothes. But as I looked around the market place,
the crowded samosa and chaat shops, and my mother and I the sole patrons of the
kulfi shop, a small smile crept onto my face. There was something so fun and
innocently mischievous about eating ice cream in the rain. My mother was right –
it was an experience, a story that I could one day tell others – and I was
determined to make the most of it. We topped off the mango kulfis with hot
jalebis and samosas, and by the time we paid the bill, my mood was considerably
improved.
The
auto-rickshaw driver on our way back home was very personable, and chatted with
us about the weather, traffic, and CET exams. “But this is life in Bangalore,
no?” he said, and we agreed whole-heartedly. Yes, this was life.
By the time we reached
home, the rain had finally stopped, though we were still buzzing from our
little adventure. My father looked up from the TV, looked at our dishevelled
hair and clothes, and asked, “Did you get caught in the storm? What did you do?”
“We ate kulfi!”
my mother and I said in unison, and burst out laughing.
As I peeled off
my wet clothes, and hopped in the shower, I thought about how our rainy day
kulfi would result in a terrible cold and throat infection. I am very sensitive
to cold weather, and the combination of cold and wet weather is just lethal. I
knew I would wake up the next morning with a runny nose and sore throat, that
would take several days to heal. But, I thought, for once, it would be worth
it.
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