by Adithi Rao
‘Okay, no problem, we’ll make it in time,’ Meera replied. ‘We’re only a couple of hours away from Bangalore now.’
Narayanamma handed two bottles of mineral water across the counter to the foreigner. The woman shut her organizer and stuffed it back into her bag. Then she picked up a bottle and found it was warm to the touch.
‘I’m so sorry to bother you further, but do you have cold water instead?’
Narayanamma frowned, not comprehending.
‘Cold?’ asked the woman hopefully, gesturing to make herself understood.
‘Oh,’ said Narayanamma, ‘chali neeru? Illa madam, sorry, phridge illa. No have,’ she said, indicating the inside of her store to show the absence of a fridge.
‘That’s okay,’ said the woman with a good-natured shrug and paid for the water. She smiled at Narayanamma, gathered her bottles to her chest and climbed into the car. Narayanamma watched the car drive away, then came around the counter to pull down the shutter. That’s when she saw the sheet of paper lying on the floor. It was covered in neat, small handwriting. She wondered if it might have fallen out from the foreigner’s organizer. It must be hers, concluded Narayanamma. She snatched up the paper and ran out of the shop, waving her arms. But the car was quite far along the Bangalore highway, and there was no stopping it now.
Narayanamma stopped running and stood there, gazing after the disappearing car, which was just a white speck on the winding red road. Wiping the sweat from her forehead, she made her way back inside the house, examining the paper curiously. It was written in such a way as to make her think this might be a recipe of some kind. But it was in English and Narayanamma could only read and write Kannada.
‘Sri,’ she called out, ‘see what this is.’
She handed her son the piece of paper and he glanced at it. ‘It’s a recipe for ice cream. Italian ice cream.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Italy. Ice cream from Italy.’
‘Idli? How can ice cream be made from idli?’ she asked, frowning.
‘Ayyo, not idli, kannamma! I-ta-ly. It’s the name of a country in Europe. This is a recipe from there.’
‘Oh.’
He perused the recipe carefully, going down the list of ingredients, muttering to himself, ‘Cream … vanilla essence, whip the … hmm … freeze …’ He looked up from the paper. ‘Amma, this looks easy. Want to try making it?’
‘First read it to me properly. You read the whole thing under your breath!’
‘Oh, sorry.’ He went over the whole thing out loud, and she listened intently.
‘But it says that the ice cream should be frozen below -18 degrees. I don’t understand what that means,’ said Narayanamma.
‘It means we have to store it in a very cold place or it won’t harden,’ explained her son. ‘That’s okay. We’ll put it in the freezer part of our kitchen fridge. It may not become very hard, but it will be sweet and cold. After all, it’s ice cream, isn’t it?’
Mother and son grinned at the prospect as they wiped their sweaty faces.
‘Ice cream in this heat will be heavenly!’ sighed Srikanth.
Narayanamma got down to work while Srikanth read out the recipe step-by-step as she went along. The recipe called for a hand beater and, once Srikanth convinced his mother that beating the mixture with her hand was not what they meant, she improvised and whipped the cream with an egg whisk she borrowed from their neighbour. The cream rose majestically under the vigorous whipping it got, until it stood there all by itself in the bowl in an impressive sort of way. So far so good.
Next came the vanilla essence. Then, just as she was about to sweeten the mixture, Narayanamma stopped. She looked at the bowl thoughtfully and told her son to wait. She went into the storeroom and returned with two raspuri mangoes.
‘What are you doing?’ asked Sri, but she didn’t answer. Instead, she sat down at her mané, the wooden board with an elongated piece of metal at one end of it. This is what she used for peeling, dicing, scraping and chopping, a most handy all-in-one apparatus without which no kitchen in Rudrapura was complete. She proceeded to skin the mangoes to uncover the rich, amber-coloured flesh of the fruit below.
‘Mango ice cream?’ asked Sri enthusiastically. His mother nodded, and he laughed in delight. He adored mangoes!
She quickly diced both mangoes, skilfully separating the seed from the inner flesh, and then handed the skin and the seed to her son to suck on. Meanwhile, Narayanamma arranged the mango pieces on the stone counter and made a paste by running the heavy grinding stone back and forth over them. She added the paste to the cream mixture along with the condensed milk, then whipped the mixture some more. When the batter was ready, she gave it to Srikanth, who secretly dipped his finger inside and sampled it before slipping the bowl into the freezer.
The next six hours went by slowly for Srikanth and painfully for his mother. Unfortunately, it was a Sunday and the boy was at home with nothing to distract him from the ice cream. His friends called him to play but he refused, saying he had to study, causing his mother’s eyebrows to shoot up and his friends to stare at him in disbelief before wandering away.
The real reason, of course, was the batter in the fridge, valiantly trying to freeze itself into ice cream despite the fact that a certain person insisted on opening the freezer door every ten minutes, letting in the warm air as he poked and prodded at it. Thanks to Srikanth’s exertions, the batter at the end of six hours was still hopelessly unformed. At last, Narayanamma located the long-neglected key that had accompanied the little fridge, locked it and tucked the key into the waistband of her sari. Then she confiscated her son’s schoolbooks and sent him out to play. Luckily, his friends were still hard at cricket and that gave both Narayanamma and the ice cream about two hours of respite. Finally, when the fridge was unlocked and the ice cream dish removed, there it was, hard and cold and beautiful to behold!
Narayanamma called Srikanth and his friends in and doled out ice cream in little steel bowls for them. They wolfed it down enthusiastically and proclaimed that it was delicious!
Srikanth grabbed his mother around the waist and lifted her off her feet. She scolded and laughed and demanded to be put back down.
‘Aunty!’ cried Ranjini, one of the friends, ‘you should open an ice-cream shop!’
A week later, a small tempo pulled up outside the Nameless Shop. Two men hopped out. They came around the back and lifted out a small icebox – about three feet high and four feet long – and a new mixer-blender, with its packaging intact. Narayanamma hurried to meet them, and one of the men placed the blender in her arms. Cradling it, she stepped aside to allow them to carry the icebox up the front path. She had them station it just outside the store, for, inside, there just wasn’t enough room to accommodate both Narayanamma and the icebox. They unwound the chord, plugged it into a three-pin socket and turned on the switch. It sprang to life with a gentle hum, and Narayanamma let out her breath. The men collected their tip, climbed back into the tempo and drove away. As she watched them leave, Narayanamma shifted the weight of the blender to her right arm and extended her left to caress the lid of the icebox. A sense of wonder filled her. All my life’s savings … she thought.
A week later, the Nameless Shop was selling, among other things, ice cream. There was vanilla, mango, chocolate and … well, that’s all. Narayanamma didn’t know how to make any other flavours. Besides, the mango season would eventually come to an end and that would narrow down the menu even further. Some of the ice cream she made got sold. However, large portions of it always remained, and, more often than not, Srikanth and his friends were called in to polish off the leftovers before they became too stale to eat. The children were enthusiastic at first, then obliging, and finally reluctant, as they tired of the same old fare, even if it was free. This state of things dragged on for a month, and Narayanamma seriously considered calling it quits.
‘You must give it some more time, Narayani,’ counselled old man Basavaraj when
she talked the matter over with him one morning. ‘No business picks up in a day.’
‘It is summer now, Thatha. If my ice creams don’t sell in this season, how will they sell during the rest of the year? It’s hopeless.’
‘It’s boring is what it is, Narayani,’ chuckled Basavaraj.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean that it is boring to eat vanilla ice-cream served in leaf cups every day.’
‘But Nanjuraj’s store has been selling Joy ice-cream for the past three years and he’s doing brisk business.’
‘Yes, but there are raspberry duets there, and ice lollies. The children love that sort of thing.’
‘You’re right, Thatha,’ admitted Narayanamma, disheartened. ‘I might as well drop this ice-cream nonsense and stick to my provisions and eggs and newspapers.’
‘Oh, but that is not what I meant. I was merely suggesting that you reinvent yourself. Give Nanjuraj and his Joy some competition. I’ve never known you to give up so easily, my daughter.’ Saying so, the old man laughed again. ‘Now I must go, it’s time for Shanta’s breakfast.’
Two evenings later, Narayanamma was returning from the mill lugging five kilos of wheat, when she passed a group of girls on their way home from school. They had stopped at the cherry orchard and were having themselves a little impromptu feast. Quite oblivious to her presence, they stuffed the berries in their mouths as they laughed and chatted about the throwball match that was coming up between Sacred Heart Girls’ Convent and Pachappa’s High School. Of course, betting was underway and speculation over Sacred Hearts’ chances was rife. Satiated and licking the sticky juice off their fingers, the girls moved on, leaving Narayanamma to examine the profusion of shiny red berries growing on the trees thoughtfully. She had eaten them once when she was a little girl. Singapore cherries they were called, for want of a better name. The trees were low and laden with fruit, not all of them ripe. Narayanamma plucked a red one and wiped it clean on the sleeve of her blouse. She put it into her mouth and bit down, letting the sweet juice spill onto her tongue.
When she reached home an hour later, she had with her three baskets. She huffed and panted up to the front gate, and Srikanth came running out, still in his school uniform, having just got home a few minutes ago.
‘Where were you, Amma? Where’s the wheat you took for grinding? What’s in those?’ he asked, eyeing her baskets curiously.
Narayanamma dragged the first one in. It was filled with Singapore cherries. ‘Bring the other two inside, putta,’ she said, abandoning her load on the kitchen floor and sitting down for a rest. ‘Then run across to the grove by the pond and bring home the bag of wheat. I couldn’t carry everything at once.’
Srikanth’s eyebrows went up when he saw the tender coconuts and totapuri mangoes. He brought them inside, fetched his mother a tumbler of water, and watched her expectantly. She downed the water in three gulps before saying, by way of explanation, ‘For the ice cream. New flavours. I’m planning to give Nanjuraj competition.’
After Srikanth had departed for the cherry grove, Narayanamma leaned back against the wall and dipped her fingers into the basket of cherries, filled her hands with the cool red orbs and let them slip through her fingers back into the basket.
And this is how the Nameless Shop came to be the most famous ice cream shop in Rudrapura.
Narayanamma made and sold ice creams of different flavours – Singapore cherry (of course), green mango or totapuri (seasonal), ripe mango (seasonal), strawberry, vanilla, chocolate, tender coconut, purple grape, burfi and filter coffee flavours. If anyone were to pass her home at seven in the morning, their senses would be assaulted by a potpourri of delectable fragrances emanating from inside. Most of her customers complained that they did not know which ice cream to choose, because everything looked so good and tasted even better!
At all hours of the day, summer or winter, a crowd of children and adults could be seen hovering around the little icebox, which was now getting too tiny for the demands being made upon it.
‘Aunty, this totapuri is a new flavour, no?’ asked a little girl who had come with her mother straight from school.
‘Yes, putti. You want to try some?’ replied Narayanamma, picking up the scoop and an empty cup.
‘And the burfi flavour?’
‘What about it?’
‘It’ll be nice, no?’ asked the child, her nose pressed to the glass lid of the icebox.
‘Yes, if you like the taste of burfi,’ replied Narayanamma, her hand poised over the container.
‘It’s made from real burfis?’ asked the child, wide-eyed.
‘Hmm. You’ll get little bits of it in your mouth as you eat it,’ replied Narayanamma with a laugh. ‘You want some?’
‘And the coffee flavour?’ asked the child.
Narayanamma and the girl’s mother exchanged looks. ‘No,’ replied Narayanamma firmly, ‘it’s not for children. Children won’t like it.’
‘But I’ll like it, Aunty! I love the smell of coffee when my grandfather drinks it every morning!’ The child smiled so infectiously that Narayanamma relented.
‘Very well, then, I’ll let you have a scoop if you wish.’ She dug into the coffee ice cream.
‘I’ll have the vanilla,’ said the little girl, suddenly coming to a decision. Her mother looked resignedly at the top of her daughter’s bright, pigtailed head. Narayanamma burst out laughing. She washed the scoop, dipped it into the vanilla container and doled out a large helping into a cup before the child could change her mind again. She put it firmly in her hand and said, ‘I’ve given you a larger helping because I like you.’
The child beamed, showing gaps where her milk teeth had fallen out. She wolfed down her ice cream, wiped her sticky hands on her school uniform and went away with her mother, waving to Narayanamma.
Surely, thought Narayanamma, ice cream has brought a certain charm into my life that wasn’t there before.
As she turned to serve her next customer, the postman rode up, dismounted from his bike and pushed his way through the crowd. He held out a letter to Narayanamma, but her fingers were sticky and she told Srikanth to open it. She continued serving Thyagaraja, the gentleman from Thatcher Mine who came with his two grandsons to eat ice cream at the Hesarillada Angadi once a week on Saturdays. Srikanth was busy serving the customers. He was good at it, never getting the orders mixed up, now that Narayanamma had extended her business by setting out a few rickety tables and chairs just outside the Nameless Shop for her customers to sit down comfortably. After this, business had nearly doubled. She even added small snacks to her menu, which sold quickly at this time of the day. Because of the chairs, people who would usually have bought a coffee, drunk it and left, often lingered, chatting with other customers and drinking a second or a third cup. Children usually ate a second ice cream if their parents were in the mood to indulge them. Narayanamma had not priced her ice creams very high, calculating her costs and leaving just a minimum profit for herself. Besides, she did not use any preservatives or artificial colouring, and so parents didn’t mind their children eating more than one sometimes.
Now, Srikanth accepted the envelope from the postman and opened it. ‘Amma …’ His voice was strangely hushed, and in spite of the din around her, caught his mother’s attention. She turned quickly, wondering if it was bad news of some kind.
‘This is from the Elado Ice Cream Company in Bangalore. They seem to be pretty big. They’ve written to say that they’ve heard about us, and are sending their representatives to Rudrapura on Friday morning at ten to sample our ice creams. If they like it and if you agree, they’ll give us a three-year contract to supply ice creams to them.’
He held out the letter to her. It looked official because it was typed out on the company letterhead with a colourful logo in one corner. The chairman of the company himself had signed it in blue ink. Narayanamma stared down at it. By now, all chatter had ceased and everyone’s attention was fixed on the letter.
&
nbsp; ‘Friday …’ said Narayanamma dazedly.
On Thursday night, there were baskets of totapuri mangos, Singapore cherries, red rose petals (the most recent addition to the menu being rose-flavoured ice cream), ripe mangoes and tender coconuts all over the kitchen floor. Coffee was brewing on one side, steam rising from the vessel. Narayanamma stood in the middle of it all, turning each ingredient into ice cream. She began with the coffee decoction, mixing it bit by bit into the vanilla base, making beautiful brown and white swirls.
‘Sri,’ she said, ‘this is almost done. Go outside and keep it in the icebox.’
Srikanth stashed away the ice cream and returned to the kitchen to continue husking the tender coconuts. He looked tired. Glancing at him, Narayanamma’s frown of concentration relaxed into gentle concern for her child. ‘You go and sleep, putta. I’ll manage the rest.’
‘No, Amma, no way! You still have so much to do. I’m done husking the coconuts. I’ll remove the pulp while you start on the Singapore cherries.’
As they worked, mother and son chatted.
‘What did your school principal say when you asked him for leave for tomorrow?’
‘Nothing much. You know how Brother Abranches is. He always scowls and looks angry, but inside he’s a softy. He slapped Manju the other day in Maths class and then later felt really bad about it. He’s like that only.’
‘Manju?’ exclaimed Narayanamma, shocked. ‘How can anyone slap Manju? That child is a saint! Sri, don’t throw away the tender coconut water. I’ll give it to Basavaraj Thatha for Ajji. They can’t afford to buy it every day and it’s so hot now.’
At six the next morning, Narayanamma raised the shutter of the Nameless Shop. She was dressed in a nice sari and her hair was neatly combed, very different from her usual harum-scarum self. Sri came running out, saw her and exclaimed, ‘You look so nice!’
Narayanamma blushed. ‘Let’s get to work. They’ll be here in two hours.’ But the corners of her mouth twitched, for she couldn’t help feeling pleased by her son’s compliment.