Summer is hammering on our doors. With temperatures soaring and tempers running high, whether it is a passenger flying off the handle on a flight, or someone dictating what we should and should not do — or eat — perhaps we could all do with some of that great ‘coolant’ on most menu cards: ice cream.

Maybe if we sample the latest flavours in the market, explore the ice cream parlours that whip up picture-perfect sundaes, or even if we opt for do-it-ourselves at home, we will cool down a bit …

Or maybe not.

Because, while most of us acknowledge a weakness for ice cream, many balk at the ‘cream’ they figure it contains and limit themselves to one tiny scoop or opt for minuscule helpings in thimble-sized bowls at those cold-stone places that hammer out an exotic combination of flavours to tempt every palate.

Those same people “helpfully” provide the calorie count and the list of ingredients of ice cream and cast meaningful looks at my girth until I join their majority ranks and regretfully — and somewhat resentfully — tone down my order to the same nanoscopic size as theirs.

If, however, I find myself on that once-in-a-lifetime visit to Eissalon-am-Schwedenplatz in Vienna or Gelateria Dondoli in San Gimignano in Italy, I quickly make up for prior abstemiousness and sample some half-a-dozen flavours before I make my choice — but even then, there is some measure of restraint as a result of the size of my travel wallet.

Being absolutely stuffed on ice cream — digging into it, relishing it as hors d’oeuvres, main course and dessert — only happened when we were children.

We didn’t own a fridge at the time — and we lived in small towns that boasted of no ice cream parlours. But there was probably an ice factory somewhere nearby because with a slab of ice and a bag of rock salt, we were able to have ice cream on a regular basis.

Mother would whip up a custard with several litres of milk and a large number of eggs, throw in a little vanilla or a half-cup of cocoa, and we were ready to go. Out would come that sturdy ice-cream pail and each of us would take a turn at the handle until the custard had thickened to the right consistency and the handle was difficult to move …

Sometimes we would invite friends over to share — but no guest privileges were extended to them. They couldn’t sit by while we worked. They too had to take a turn — and they were happy to participate and work up an appetite to rival ours.

We would often make more than one pail of ice cream for a sitting and we saw it as a huge advantage that we had no fridge: because everything we made had to be consumed.

In later years, we had the thrill of our first ‘Softy’, our first gelato, we had ice cream sandwiches, innovative combinations of flavours in faraway places … but I have never tasted anything better than those huge bowls of ice cream we downed as kids.

You could say it has got something to do with the magic of memory. You could attribute it to the fact that we didn’t give a thought to our surroundings (the kitchen steps), or our clothes or our company. We didn’t wonder whether the colours or the flavours chosen by others in the group were better than ours — there was, after all, only one option available. We had never heard the word ‘calorie’ and there was literally no tomorrow for our ice cream.

We just lived the words of Dennis the Menace: “Ice cream tastes best when there’s lots of it!” – and wound up blissfully cool, and contented with our lot and with the rest of the world!

­ ­- Cheryl Rao is a journalist based in Hyderabad, India.