Kulfi in March

This must qualify as Climate Change. Walking  past the busy Sector 22 market in Chandigarh, I was taken aback by an earthen plot dutifully wrapped in moist red cloth parked right in front of Nagpal Sweets, a famous budget middle class restaurant. I stopped and saw a couple of plates, a bucketfull of water and a few spoons and knives laid out on the table.

The shop was selling kulfi!. For those who are not aware kulfi is a frozen hardened kind of ice cream dessert which is served with falooda (vermicilli) topped with rose sherbet.

Now falooda kulfi is a favourite in North India during the summer season, but what intrigued me was that it is still the first week of March. I would have loved to enter the sweet shop and try some hot steaming carrot pudding or the gajjar da halwa. During winters, two of my favourite desserts are the gajjar da halwa or dal halwa (made with lentils).  But instead of the hot carrot pudding they were selling frozen kulfi! Maybe, they still had some hot carrot pudding inside their shop, but the appearance of kulfi in March was too much of a shock for me.

Reeling under 28 C in the months of February and March and having done away with most of my woolens,  I am reminded of my college days when during the last week of March, I would still be wearing a half sleeves jacket or a sweater.

(This is from a talk that I delivered last month on climate change).

Another telling example of how climate change has dawned upon us.