For those of you who’ve been reading my yarns regularly, you’d have noticed that I’m all over the place. What started off as ‘A Planters Tales’ has now reached a stage where I am having to dig deep into my memory to share what, in my personal view, despite having nothing to do with Tea, is an interesting anecdote. This particular one going way beyond just digging deep, feels more like my having used an excavator to burrow my way almost to the center of the earth, my memory having taken me back to my childhood days. A happy period before my dad handed in his dinner pail.
Besides the fact that this contraption had still not acquired the status of a ‘must have’ in every household, we were living in Simla where no one had ever heard of, or for that matter, had even dreamt of possessing a refrigerator. Regardless of which, come summer and we’d have the pleasure of home-made ice cream.
The process would start with the snow (not ice) which when required, would be delivered to our house in buckets or large tin cannisters. In the forest behind our house in a heavily wooded copse where the sunlight could not penetrate through the thick foliage, the local Paharia’s (native hill folk) had dug two very deep wells. During the winter months when we’d get as much as 8’ of it, the snow accumulated in the vicinity of those wells would be shoveled into those wells, to be forgotten about through springtime. Come summer and whenever required, the Paharia’s would deliver that to the house in buckets, charging a small pittance for each load.
The delivered snow, mixed with rock salt, would be packed tight in the wooden bucket
around a lidded steel cannister in the center of which was a rigid steel rod which ended in a thingamajig which resembled a ‘propeller’ type cluster of fins at the bottom end. The top of that rod, via a gear/sprocket assembly was fitted with a handle, the turning of which would rotate the ‘propeller’ fabrication.
Into the cannister would go milk and sugar supplemented with more than a few handfuls of a blend of almonds, pistachios and raisins. As the summer peaked, which was when the fruit would be transported up to Simla from the plains, the dry fruit would be substituted with fresh mango. How my younger sister and I loved that season, being allowed the pleasure of messing ourselves up, licking the gutli (the seed) clean after the pulp had been squeezed out of the jacket, leaving us walking around with our faces smeared with traces of Mango pulp.
Once all the ingredients were in and the lid locked into place, we were given first go at turning the handle for the propeller to start the churn. Within a short time, as the concoction inside the canister thickened, with stronger arms being required to turn the handle, the elders would take over, taking turns to keep the propeller rotating. With the lid being lifted off every couple of minutes to check on the magical transformation the churning was doing inside the cannister, it would take almost an hour before it became almost impossible to rotate the handle any further.
The ice cream having been scooped out, the almost empty canister was handed over to my sister and me. Both of us taking turns to clamp the cold cannister between our legs, our arms disappearing into the cannister almost to our elbows to get to the bottom of the cannister to scrape out whatever had been left in there. By the time we were done digging and licking, leaving our faces smeared with cream and bits of fruits, the cannister would be sparkling clean, a lot cleaner than any dog would have left it.
If one could taste heaven, that was it!