It was a summer evening. The light of the Sun was slowly tracing its way back and moving towards another part of the planet.
People began appearing, now that the peak of the day’s heat was past. Children appeared as well, laughing and excited to reach the playground or waiting for their friends to come while they exchanged words of their own world.
Some aged people slowly walked out of their homes to enjoy a necessary evening walk.
Different parts of the park slowly became occupied by people. It was only the matter of an hour or two before the natural light would disappear for the night.
One of the main attractions of the evening occurrences was yet to appear, and the sound of the arrival was heard. Some were eager to hear it, while some became glad to hear it when it came. It was the ice candy man. Who pulled the rope to sound the bell and let others know of his arrival.
The ice candy man would appear from the bend of the road at the corner of the park. He cycled the pedals to move his cart. The hand which he used to sound the bell was also the one he used to wave at the children once he saw them looking at him.
A pleasant smile he would always carry. In fact, the ice candy man smiled so much that it was a popular belief among the children that he always smiled, even while he was at home reading a book or eating a meal or watching television.
The cart came to stop in a spot in a clearing where it would come into the view of everyone in the park. Some children rushed to it at once, some took some time thinking about whether to spend that money in their pocket or not because their parents had told them not to have too much of the ice candies.
On the cart were bottles containing colourful flavouring syrups, extracts from fruits, and sugared liquid. Inside the ice box were blocks of ice. The ice candy man would take out a block and shave the ice, he would then put the shavings in a closable container of varied shapes and then insert a small candy stick from below. He opened the container to reveal the shaped ice on the stick and then came the colourful part where he would bathe it in the colourful flavored syrup. All children small, curious and full of livid imagination would watch as if some form of magic was occurring.
“Where do you think he gets all that ice from?” asked little Megha to her friend while holding an ice candy herself.
“You don’t know? His house is full of it, ice everywhere. He has a small piece of land covered with ice shavings where he grows ice blocks ” replied Jeet
“Really? Have you seen it?” asked Megha
“No.. Nobody has seen it. It is a secret which no one is supposed to find,” and after thinking about what he said he added, “Don’t tell anyone about it.”
“Then, how do you know?”
“He told me. One day when I asked him, he whispered it into my ear.”
… and for a long time Megha kept on imagining about how the ice candy man lived and did things in his house where everything was ice..
Written by Anuran Chatterji
Ice of Sweetness
Early Morning Memories 