The ice cream song

“Kwality! Kwality!” is what the ice cream man would cry as he wheeled his cart through the lanes and by-lanes of Kolkata in the 1980s and 1990s. He was relaxed as he made this beckoning call. He knew that in the late afternoon and early evening, kids and adults of upper-middle-class households would be in an unhurried state of mind to buy ice cream to further unwind.

Sometimes we’d ask him to halt by the time he had almost disappeared down the wind of the street. He had a sharp hearing, so he’d return most of the time with a smile on his perspired face asking, “How many kids live here? How many ice creams of which flavours do you want?”

My widowed mother could only afford vanilla. “That’s the best and healthiest flavour,” she reasoned.

Sometimes the ice cream seller would vanish by the street bend before we could stop him. He was exploring the maze of tiny winding streets of the city till twilight set in and TV sets beamed with the first evening news.

On scorching hot summer afternoons, he’d traverse the streets in silence, wiping the sweat off his brow. The ice creams had sold like hotcakes or had melted despite the icebox within.

In India, sweet sellers would travel villages, cities and towns on foot pleasantly hawking their wares. There’s a heart-wrenching scene in Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali where impoverished Apu and Durga are prohibited by their mother to buy sweets. They find joy in simply following the sweetmeat seller with a dog at their heels through the village woods.

In our neighbourhood, the mother of a poor man was on her deathbed after a long and painful illness. The doctor said that she simply had a night to live. Her last wish was, “I want to eat a lot of ice cream along with my family.” That day the entire collection of ice cream was bought from a trolley. She breathed her last at dawn.

[This picture is of ice cream on Pixabay, not of Kwality Ice cream.]

#kwality, #kwalityicecream, #kwalityfoods, #kwalityindia, #kwalitysweets, #kwalityeternally, #kwalitykolkata, #kwalitymilk, #kwalityoflife, #kwalityglobal, #kwalitymemories, #80smemories, #kwalitywalls, #icecream, #icecreamlover, #icecreamtime, #icecreamaddict, #icecreams, #icecreamsofinsta