Winters are long gone and spring is also in a bit of a hurry to leave now. We shall be celebrating Holi next week and this is the time we start polishing our juice and sharbat glasses. It is said that the tradition of sharbat in India was introduced by the Mughal. These summer drinks are mostly made with juices and extracts from fruits, flowers, seasoning added with water, soda or milk. Sharbats are mostly consumed chilled, traditionally with ice and now commonly in the refrigerator. You can have a sweet, salty or tangy sherbet or a surprising fusion of all those tastes.

The purpose of sherbet is primarily to quench the thirst. But it is also to cool your system and rejuvenate you on a hot summer day. Conventionally these drinks were coloured and flavoured with natural ingredients and spices. Many of us would get nostalgic about glasses of orange squash we would have been served during summer vacation afternoons.

During the last couple of years, during the course of trips and travels, we have tasted many sharbats that completely blew us over. These were colourful, tasty and made us forget our old flame – Orange Squash and the extremely popular Rooh Afza. We are not sure of the sharbat recipes but any of you with some love for the kitchen may be able to reverse-engineer these elixirs. Do let us know, and we will invite ourselves to taste and test these drinks.

Mohabbat ka Sharbat, Delhi

Charity begins at home and this one is from Delhi. We have an annual ritual. Rain, hail or storm, or sweatiest season of the year, we visit the Jama Masjid area for a Ramzan Food Walk. We tasted this amazingly refreshing sharbat at Jama Masjid during one of our earliest food walks. There were many carts mixing and selling a baby-pink coloured beverage that looked as enchanting as appetizing. We came to know this was Mohabbat ka Sharbat and was a blend of milk, Rooh Afza, sugar and watermelon. It was like a pleasant milkshake but way milder. We have not found this drink any other time of the year and eagerly wait for Ramzan for having Mohabbat ka Sharbat, the Elixir of Love.

 

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Khus ka Sharbat, Bikaner

We visited Bikaner in the month of March and we were told one of the must-dos here is to try sharbats at Chunni Lal Tanwar Sharbat Wale. Bikaner’s famous Chunni Lal Sharbat Wale serves a variety of sharbats and we asked our tourist taxi to take us to Jail Road, opposite Lady Elgin’s School. They had many many flavours and we tried some of them. Our favourite ones were white-rose, khus and Kesar. We could sense natural ingredients in all our little glasses. In fact, they had bottles of concentrates as well and we were spoilt for choice as to what to buy for home. Khus and White Rose were finally voted most popular and a few bottles found a place in our duffels. Chunni Lal Tanwar Sharbat Wale is indeed a must-do in Bikaner.

Tender Coconut Sharbat, Kolkata

Kolkata never ceases to surprise. If you are in Kolkata and are visiting Indian Coffee House or the used book market in the College Street area, look out for Paramount. They are a hundred plus years old sharbat shop and sell a host of sharbats, many of which were little known to us. We went with our instincts and requested tender coconut sharbat with coconut cream. This was heaven in the mouth, perhaps the most delicious sharbat you can ever try in India. The other variant we tried at Paramount Kolkata was rose malai sharbat that was curd-based and surprisingly tasty too. This pocket-friendly sharbat joint takes us to a by-gone era. We were surprised that people would patronise a soft-drink bar even a hundred years ago. Paramount zindabad we say!

Buransh ka Sharbat, Uttarakhand

Rhododendron bunches are one of the prettiest colours we have seen ever. Rhodos or buransh are bright red flowers that grow in the wild, or on hillsides and sprinkle such hues on the surroundings that it seems, it is the festival of colours – Holi, forever. The extract of these flowers is used to make a sharbat in Uttarakhand. Needless to say, any drink prepared from buransh flowers look beautiful like red wine. But it is not just pretty; it is also naturally sweet, refreshing, and devoid of harmful calories. Wherever we travel in Uttarakhand this is a frequent welcome drink. Be it Aahana Resort or Alaya Resort in Jim Corbett or Misty Mountains in Jhaltola, we love this every time.

Gur ka Sharbat, Delhi

This is another one from Ramadan Food Walk. Blending simple ingredients like gur, lemon juice, ice, and water, they make this very refreshing drink that is mildly sweet and slightly tart. One can keep having glass after glass and still not be satiated. And at Rs. 5 per glass, it does not burn a hole in the pocket as well.

Lemon Masala Sharbat, Hyderabad

When you exit Golconda Fort, this cart is famous for its masala lemonade and it’s a must to quench your thirst after a round of the huge fort complex. Mildly sweet and slightly tangy, it hydrates and gives you a sense of completion. No wonder, we kept this candidate for the last. Do try it, it costed peanuts, but made us very happy.

We raise our glasses to India, Indian sharbats and the upcoming Indian summer. Hope you liked reading about these glasses of life. Please revisit this post because as and when we come across a new sharbat, we shall document that here.

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