I had passed it many times before. A nondescript little store, selling nothing but sugarcane juice. Small glass, Rs. 6. Big glass, Rs, 8. Big glass without ice, Rs. 10. I hadn't been inside for about ten years. I used to be a regular when I was a kid. Drinking two, three glasses. It was heaven after three hours of cricket under the hot summer sun. But once I left for the States, the cricket stopped. Once the cricket stopped, the sugarcane juice stopped as well.
I don't know what it was that day, that attracted me towards the store. I was passing by; and somehow I stopped on impulse, and just walked in. It was still the same. Nothing had changed. The posters on the wall, the tables and chairs, the glasses. The so-called waiter tiled his head towards me. “Ek thanda bina baraf!”, I yelled at him, trying to make sure he heard me over the ruckus the cane-squeezing machine was creating. He nodded in disapproval, catching red-handed yet another customer who wanted it cold without compromising any volume in the glass on the ice. He filled a tall glass with the sugarcane nectar and plopped it down perfectly on the off-white sun mica covered table without spilling a drop.
I spent a moment taking the simple pleasure of the a glassful of freshly squeezed sugarcane juice in, and lifted the glass to my parched lips to take in a massive gulp. Some people like to sprinkle masala on the juice and sip it bit-by-bit, but not me. I like to take in as much as I can in the first gulp. I just feel that something so delicious should be enjoyed in abundance, and not in a measured manner.
I finished my glass of ganna juice in two quick gulps, then took a look around. This little place where I had been coming for the last sixteen-odd years, hadn't changed a bit. Buildings around it had been torn down and converted in to 50-storey skyscrapers, but Rajhans Juice Center remained as it was. Homely. It was like a place stuck in time in the midst of this ever-changing megalopolis that is Mumbai.
The waiter beckoned to me to vacate my seat for the next paying customer. I got up and proceeded to the counter where the owner sat. He said, “Dus.” As I paid him with an old ten-rupee note, he smiled. It seemed like he recognized the kid who used to come to his shop after a tiring afternoon of cricket. He asked, “Kasa kai?” I replied with a broad smile, “Majet.” I left the store, nostalgic of my childhood, smiling.
Cities are defined by their ability to keep re-inventing themselves. They are also defined by the un-changed neighbourhoods that keep the original flavour of a city alive. A sliver of my childhood nostalgia had just been brought back to me. I smiled all the way to my apartment seventeen stories above Rajhans Juice Center.
