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Sipping away the heat
`Ramacham' comes in handy for making the traditional thirst-quenchers.
You have just opened your eyes in the morning, but feel as though you have sprinted a mile in a sweatshirt. The previous night you spent some time summoning up energy to go to bed. Come midnight and you lie awake wondering whether things can get hotter and sweatier than this. Just in case you are wondering, summer is in town again!
As with each season of `hot days and hotter nights', `thirst quenchers' of various kinds are doing brisk business in the city. Sellers of tender coconut are suddenly looking an energised lot as they try to keep with the steadily rising demand for this `bottled-by-nature' drink. Even with a sharp upsurge in demand, vendors have, so far, not hiked the price of tender coconuts which mostly sell at Rs. 10 a piece.
Equally dear to thirsty citizens is the alluring watermelon. Well-dressed gentlemen and ladies, lugging a heavyweight watermelon from the vendor's stall to their car is a common sight in many places in the city today. Some enterprising vendors have put up impromptu juice stalls selling watermelon juice. The fact that you don't need an electrical appliance to extract juice from a watermelon also comes as a blessing for these vendors.
Those who feel that they are a bit classier with their thirst quenchers are making a beeline for what are now called the `shake stalls' that dot the city. Here you can have your choice of fruit juice (probably at a higher price than a kilo of the same fruit), with lots ice and/or sugar. The advantage of hanging out at these stalls is that should you tire of fruits, you can always get yourself a milk shake that is named exotic and as some would say, priced exotic too.
In this midst of all this thirst quenching are some folks who rely on simple, but time-tested methods of keeping the water levels in their body on an even keel. What these folks - many see them as walking anachronisms - do is to go to the nearest shop selling `pacha marunnnu' and procure either some `Raamacham' some `Pathimukham' or even some `Tulasi'.
The next step in the procedure is to top up an earthen pot with water, preferably from a well. In goes the Raamacham or Tulasi. After a few hours you have a potful of cool water rich in the medicinal value of these herbs. The pro-Raamacham coalition points out that you can purchase armloads of herbs for all the money spent on those costly shakes. Moreover, say these folks, do you have any idea of the amount of sugar that you consume along with that shake or even with that fresh juice? Any idea as to what damage this so-called `white poison' can do to your system, they ask.
Some people go even further. The best thirst-quencher, they assert, is plain water, period. No herbs, no shakes, no fresh juices... just clean water. After all, they argue, getting thirsty is nothing new. What came first? The water or the shake?
By G. Mahadevan
Photos: S. Gopakumar
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Life
Bangalore
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Coimbatore
Delhi
Hyderabad
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Madurai
Thiruvananthapuram
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