Thumbs up…

Nostalgia comes in many forms I’ve discovered. And the latest ‘avatar’ of my nostalgia is a fizzy, brown beverage!

Last week, I was doing a grocery run. Only this time, it was a social occasion because I had gone with - in addition to buggy, baby et al – my folks as well, who are visiting. Once we’d plodded through the aisles making things more of an event than anything else really! Stopping every so often to discuss the merits and demerits of a biscuit or a jellybean (we went with gourmet berry BTW, which I’d recommend). And getting some scary stares from efficient looking lunch time shoppers because we were verging on blocking the aisles during some particularly intense huddles… Overall, we got done without major incident and got to check out. In front of us was an Indian couple with the Indian Cola – Thums Up!

I shamelessly accosted the lady and asked her where she found it. The question, of course created an immediate bonding situation. She beamed at high voltage and pointed me surreptitiously to the place she found it. I ran towards it with arms outstretched and fetched not one but two six-packs. *sigh* so good! And you don’t easily find it in Dubai

Now to understand the fuss, I think you need to be brown or a strong brown-o-phile. A friend of mine who’s not brown said he suspects the manufacturers add ‘masala’ (that’s curry powder to the rest of you) to the mix and that’s why quite so many of us buzz around it like bees :P.

No clue what they put in it… all I know is that to me it tastes of home. And days when you didn’t get to have a ‘soft-drink’ that often and when you did it was usually a celebration, small or big. When you had to buy one, pay a deposit almost as much as the drink for the bottle, and then return it to get your money back. Memories of school canteens where if you had hit jackpot on the day for some reason, you could traipse up to the seller and ask for either a Thums Up or a Gold Spot (that’s the orange drink). They would get it for you from the refrigerator in the back and open the cap before handing it over. None of this twist to open stuff from self-serve coolers on those special days!

A couple of months ago, I’d gone home and on one of the smaller streets, we saw a tiny little grocer. We pulled over and asked for a Gold Spot. He just looked at us really oddly and gave us a Mirinda. Clearly no one sent us the memo on the fact that they’d stopped production years ago! Is it the same? Nope! I remember the ad for Gold Spot – it had a baseline ‘the zing thing’.  Now I don’t know whether its because I’m in the field or not, but I trust ads. When someone tells me something is ‘the zing thing’, I believe them! And now apparently ‘the zing thing’ is dead.

So, before the death of more nostalgia-drivers, I’m hitting the Thums Up. And remembering the taste of home. Because though I keep going further and further from home, you can never take the ‘brown’ out of the girl. No sir!