I vividly remember the summer days of my childhood, mostly because they were marked by certain things that defined the season for us as kids. The late evenings under the still bright sky, the late night walks with parents, and begging them for ice-creams. The smell of Cinthol lemon soap wafting in the wake of kids in school, the summer vacations and our grandmothers' houses.
There was another thing that we happily welcomed with the season.
I went home a couple of days back and there was a familiar smell wafting out of the kitchen; it is a smell many of us associate with summer and have grown up with. It was the overwhelmingly sweet smell and inviting smell of Rooh Afza, the drink us '90s kids swore by and loved in unison.
Rooh Afza at once reminds me of home, of my mother, and the afternoons I rushed back from school to a cool, refreshing glass with my lunch.
That is on days when I wasn't taking the sweet sherbet in my water bottle to the school. There were so many of us who did that, it was the highlight of our school day, keeping us excited through the day. There were kids who would ask us to share it and we would be so stingy with it.
Of course it tastes like what nectar would taste like, at least in my head. But one of the reasons why the drink is so loved is because of how visually, olfactorily pleasing it is. And so many of us have been served it by our mothers and grandmothers that the brain tends to now associate the two, mingled with the feeling of home.
That is the thought I went with when I gifted a bottle of the sherbet to a friend who has recently started living away from her house and home-city. The excitement was visible, she was thrilled; but only later did she tell me the funny story in which her mother hated Rooh Afza but had a massive craving for it when she was pregnant with my friend here (who grew up to love the drink).
So after all these years, it is hardly surprising that the drink is close to so many people's hearts, and that the sales have always been steadfast. Rooh Afza has, and will continue to have, a lot of nostalgia packed in that one bottle.
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