Ice Cream- The Five Minute Wonder

I love ice creams. Talking of these long languorous summer days, one thing that not only makes me feel breezy but boosts up the energy charts is Ice cream! and I have just finished eating my favourite Chocobar right now! Well that’s precisely one reason why I wanted to write about it.

The smooth, creamy, melt in mouth, and absolutely divine confection has always topped the list of my ‘Food I Love’ since childhood. Right from my childhood days in Delhi when every summer day used to be an ice cream day and dad used to take me in the evenings near the C4/E market to the ‘Kwality ice-cream wala bhaiya’ to buy me a ‘Vanilla Cup’ (Papa had brought me a cone once and more then me, my blue frock had savoured the ice cream. So more or less he used to play safe after that.) to the choicest of the confections that I have tried now like 21 Love, Chocolate Chips, Manhattan Mania, Zaafraani Badaam Pista, Bannana Splits etc, I have enjoyed every bit of it.

Nirula’s, Chanakyapuri, has been another witness to my ice cream sessions. I can never forget my much-loved Kesar Pista there. (I developed a taste for it because of mum. She did not let me have too much of chocolate ones for avoiding my much dreaded visits to the dentist.) This time, when in Delhi for my internship, I actually paid a visit to Nirula’s, to go back 13 years down the memory lane and in spite a lot of options available and no dread of my mommy around, I tried Kesar Pista.
Perfect and Pleasurable indeed.

I don’t know but ice cream eating is a kind of give up act, a resignation to which no amount of pessimism can have an effect. We let go of every control that we have over our senses while savouring the delight. Indeed in those five minutes we become the slaves of our own senses.

I had done a restaurant review some time back and the first thing I asked was, of course, the dessert they served. “Honey and Figs is our new addition, would you like to try” said the attendant. I gave him a big bright smile and the three course meal started backwards and ended with the same, the lovely Honey and Figs. Well the restaurant ended up with a passable review but with a special mention to Honey and Figs!

And how can we forget ‘softy’- the most romantic form of eating the ice cream. Those quick short side to side movements of the mouth, the love making to the mushy mass of cream on the top of the cone can actually transport one in the world of some absolute ecstasy.

But there is another aspect to this creamier taste. Ice Cream is sweet and its here that it becomes sinful. And if you add the lip smacking chocolate to it, we are more fanatical to break the principals of morality in a more extravagant manner. But why worry about calories if it is all about ‘Sieze the day’ with no offence to my friend who tells me that ‘sometimes the day seizes you’.

In this world that has become so jarring and dissonant, where we all are so fussy and finicky about small little things in life, where innocence is non entity, Ice Cream remains a true means of reviving oneself. One can actually go back to one’s school days and nurture this wonderful feeling of having an ice cream where pleasure runs barefoot.