Before our recent trip to Calcutta, my father kept mentioning that he’d see if Ice Cream Soda was still available. I must say that I was quite confused, because what I knew about Ice Cream Soda and what he was referring to were completely different. Turns out, Ice Cream Soda was the flavour of a beverage created by Cottons and Co. A drink totally novel for a girl who did not grow up in Calcutta.

Cottons and Co. was established in 1906 as a beverage manufacturing company. However, upon doing a little more digging, there was not much I could find on the company itself. Being a local Calcutta brand, competing with Pepsi, Coca Cola and all the other popular beverage manufacturing companies, it must have been a rather daunting task to maintain a factory and keep up with the large scale at which larger companies manufacture and supply. Nonetheless, Cottons has kept at it for more than a century now. Wow! A century is not a short period of time.

After a heavy snack of chaats at Vardaan market, me and my father took a walk back home. As I snacked on my Channa Chipti while walking, my father finally found a Mudi Dokaan (a mom-and-pop grocery store) where Ice Cream Soda was available. While I was intrigued, my father looked as if he’d found a little piece of his childhood in that store. It looked like plain soda to me, but it was when I tasted it that I understood why it was in fact called Ice Cream Soda. A sip of it gave me a burst of a fizzy vanilla drink which in fact is what ice cream soda is! For those of you who are lactose intolerant but still want a taste of Ice Cream Soda, this is a brilliant choice. It truly is a unique drink and the best part of it was that it has existed for so many years.  Their most famous flavours have been, Ginger Ale, Ice Cream Soda and Lemonade. I did get the chance to drink quite a bit of lemonade this time as well, which was equally refreshing.

We often don’t appreciate the beauty of all that already exists around us. The fact that companies such as Cottons and Co. are losing their relevance stands as a testament to how the idea of factories or corporatization has changed over the past century. Smaller companies such as Sarsi, which was owned by the Indian Chinese minority in Calcutta have shut shop. A question which we must ask is that despite loving the idea of nostalgia, are we truly trying to keep these objects which we attribute these feelings to, alive? Or is it the sense of losing them that makes us want it more? Even in wanting it more, do we do all that we can to make sure that these beverages, foods and spaces, stick around for a little longer or do we somewhere enjoy the idea of losing something only to reminisce?