Delhiwale: So-so-summertime happiness

In Delhi's Hazrat Nizamuddin, vendor Jahangir serves rare rollerwali ice cream, a fruity summer delight, before monsoon ends his seasonal treat.

So much romantic myth is weaved around the creation of this dessert. Legend has it that pure white buffalo milk is whisked late in the night, or perhaps early, pre-dawn. Whenever, the whisking has to be done under a full moon sky. Only then does the fresh dew condense finely on the resulting froth; which then goes on to become the most dreamlike of all the delicacies hawked along Delhi streets—and this last point is no myth. Sadly, Daulat Ki Chaat is a winter guest, too frail for the heatwaves.

This is actually milk-soaked crushed ice, thickly crusted around a mechanical roller, and flavoured with colourful fruit pulp. (HT)

Fret not. There exists a summertime street delicacy as dreamy as Daulat. On this warm night, the little-known dish is sighted in a congested market lane in central Delhi’s Hazrat Nizamuddin basti. The dish happens to be a strange cylindrical mass of dark pink—see photo. This is actually milk-soaked crushed ice, thickly crusted around a mechanical roller, and flavoured with colourful fruit pulp. Vendor Jahangir is constantly rotating the machine’s handle to keep the roller in motion. The action apparently keeps the ice from melting.

Returning to the city every year in April, the so-called rollerwali ice cream is so rare that you have to be very, very lucky to spot a cart. The knickknacks in Jahangir’s cart include a fruit basket crammed with apples, oranges, bananas, and also the season’s first mangoes. A tiny kettle on the side contains more of the colourful fruit pulp. On receiving a customer’s order, the vendor tilts the kettle over the whirring roller. The gooey pulp oozes out of the nozzle, falling reluctantly on the rotating ice, where it instantly freezes. The vendor picks a knife, quickly scraping out slivers of ice-cream from the roller, piling them up on a bowl. (More enterprising vendors also place a bowl of chopped fruit right beneath the moving roller. The fruit pieces cling to the roller’s pulpy sticky ice.)

Now to the thrilling part. The first bite of Jahangir’s ice cream immediately sends a Nabokovian tingle down the spine. The fruity freshness forcefully jolts the senses.

Momentarily mobbed by customers (some in the crowd are just curious onlookers), the vendor complains that an “influencer” had recently made a video of him “but I haven’t gone viral.” Meanwhile, the uncomplaining roller is continuing to roll. It will stop with the start of the monsoon, when Jahangir will switch his street vending to aloo-tikki burger.