Yesteryear musings(4) - Theeni

The common item on which pocket money was expended was the ice candy. This consisted of ice shavings lumped on a stick and sprinkled with colored water. The trade was ethical because the vendor never claimed it to be ice cream. He called it only kuchi ice namely ice on a stick.

For those who were banned from eating ice there was the sherbet. This was the same colored water added to normal water and topped up with some seed that used to bloat once in contact with water. The pods of the seed when put in water used to explode thus separating the seeds. Can someone tell me the name of the seed?

There was the mango cut in a shape resembling a row of teeth and hence aptly called pallu-manga. It was served with salt and chilly powder as side dishes. There was the mentholated peppermint in a spherical shape with black and white stripes all over. Almond mittais were for the rich boys – fairly large-sized egg-shaped sweets with an almond inside and sugar coated on the outside. It used to appear in two colors – white and rose.

An item that has become almost extinct from vegetable/fruit markets is the wood apple (called vlampazham). In some places one can see it on the eve of Ganesh chathurthi. Preparing sweet pachadi out of vlampazham was one of the easiest things to do for the housewife. She only had to scoop the pulp out and mix with jaggery. Imagine my pleasant surprise when on a visit to Colombo recently I had vlampazha juice at the Taj hotel’s breakfast offering. The pleasant surprise continued with murungai ilai (drumstick leaves) soup at lunch. If hotels at Colombo can offer these, why not hotels in Chennai?