The Red Rose Drink
Today, the news reports are of a distressing shortage. Apparently, there are no supplies of this product all over the country and the shelves in the shops are empty. Let me elaborate. For those of us born in the era before Frooti and Appy and Rasna, there was nimbu paani, nariyal paani, buttermilk, aam panna. And then there was The Red Rose Drink. The sickeningly sweet, usually horribly diluted in water, reeking of artificial colour and scent rose drink we dreaded. It was a summer cooler, reputed to keep the brain and body cool. Rose petals possibly do have this property but this bottled stuff wouldn’t know a rose petal if it were bitten by one. I’m pretty sure roses went on protest strikes and dharnas if forced to grow near a Red Rose Drink manufacturing facility. Or just wilted and died of the shame. This is the drink making headlines with its shortage today.
We were usually served very large glasses at maiden aunts’ homes and horrible grimaces from Mum would force us to sip it, trying politely not to gag. The horrific result of actually and heroically downing the glass was to be promptly served a refill. One got the sneaking feeling that the same bottle was reserved for us on each annual visit and some arcane rite kept it from ever getting empty.
So as an adult, the stuff was to be avoided at all costs. Sore throats, bronchitis, even pneumonia were trotted out as excuses when served the Red Drink. Until the day we visited a tiny village up north, close enough to the border for the houses to be shaken by mortar fire and shelling on some nights.
Nature plays a trick on you up in those mountains. In summer, the air is cool but the sun! That sun can burn you to a crisp and parch your throat. The snow capped peaks in the distance are only futile mirages. Also, trying to keep up with supremely fit young jawans is terrible on the knees and the ego of a 40 year old civilian. We had hiked up ‘a gentle slope’ (as the sweet young man in charge of us encouragingly described it – my arse. Neither gentle nor a slope. More a jagged wall of rock that we were expected to scale. The local goat population laughed it up that day). 40 degrees centigrade, nary a patch of shade, our drinking water supplies foolishly depleted. Just as I was about to make a spectacle of myself and beg, gibbering, to be allowed to rest, we reached a village perched precariously on an outcrop of rock. There was a tiny gurudwara and a miniscule school and the headman’s home.
The old man was a very dignified Sardar, who doubled up as the village school headmaster. He courteously seated us and murmured a few words. From within the house, a shy young man emerged carrying a tray. On it were four giant steel tumblers, frosty and oh so inviting. I was served one and my thirst was so intense I must have gulped down half the liquid before I realised what it was. Nectar. Ambrosia. Water of life. All these words were inadequate for the deliciousness of that rose sherbet. The fragrance was delicate, of the young roses just bloomed in the early morning. The taste was clear and not cloying. Certainly this was essence of rose but what roses these must have been! Here in this sherbet were rose petals in the prime of life that had gone willingly and honourably to the ultimate sacrifice. I drank the rest of the drink slowly, savouring each taste of distilled heaven. The old man looked on indulgently. He said in a slow measured way: “This is real Rooh afza. From the roses of our village.” I stuttered my thanks and we soon left to trek back down to the jeeps at the base of the slope. Which was really quite gentle. The burst of energy that sherbet gave me had me trotting ahead of everyone else. Heat? what heat?
I dream sometimes of that old headman and that rose sherbet. His hospitality and his graciousness. He offered us a taste of what is rare and increasingly precious. The taste of a simple life well lived.
A shortage of the artificial stuff is fine. Good riddance. The thought that that village and its roses may not have survived the recent escalation of animosity on the border is unbearable.