A kulfi to celebrate history!

by Shrikant Gupta (India)

I didn't expect to find India

I had recently shifted to Pune for my new job as an IT engineer. While we were on bench waiting for projects being assigned to us, me and my friends decided to take a trip to the Sinhagad( The Lion's Fort) not much far from the city. It's a magnificent fort situated atop a hill nearby Pune and is steeped in the long history of the area and its rulers, the Marathas. We rented some bikes one weekend and reached the base of the hill early morning. We were now supposed to trek to the top of the hill to the fort passing through its various lanes, steps and gates on the way. The monsoon season along with the early morning atmosphere one can associate with the hills promised us a memorable journey ahead. I observed many hawkers and shops at the base selling various local snacks and cuisines to freshen them up before the journey up top. As we didn't expect to find anything to eat after starting our journey to the fort, we had a light breakfast before we started our climb. We might not have climbed 500 feet when it started to shower. The weather turned a bit more chilly and the climb more beautiful and exciting. Just few feets later, the shower made way for a light rain. I had some local Marathi friends with me who knew better about the journey and so were prepared with raincoats and umbrellas, I wasn't. Throughout our climb, they were telling me and my other non-local friends about the stories related to the fort. One of them was about the historic Battle of Sinhagad where the Maratha general Tanaji Malusare performed the impossible task of scaling the hills and capturing the fort from the Mughals. That feat has turned into a local legend of the area being taught even in schools. I expected the rest of our journey to be similar. Climbing stone stairs, passing through large gates, taking pictures from viewpoints looking and listening to stories. I was wrong! We might have climbed a little more than half when we encountered another one of the gates guarding the fort. There, at one corner of the platform around the gate, I observed an old man in traditional Marathi attire sitting with a big container tied around his shoulders selling something to people gathered around him. He had in his hands what looked like a Kulfi (a traditional Indian ice cream). I was surprised! All my friends visiting for the first time were in fact. A kulfi is the last thing we expected to find at such heights. But there he was, a man in his 50s, who had taken the trouble of climbing around 1500ft. with such a heavy container around him instead of making his pit at the base of the hill like the other hawkers, just to sell some ice creams on such a rainy day. We went to him. I observed he was selling the same two or three flavours of the kulfis one could generally find anywhere in the country. I stood there for a while observing him before finally asking him as to why he took the trouble of climbing all the way here to sell his kulfis instead of at the base. His face brightened up as he started telling me his story. He was speaking in Marathi and one of my friends translated him to me. He came from a long line of local Marathas who had started selling the kulfis at the fort to honour the sacrifice of Tanaji Malusare and celebrate his iconic feat. His ancestors started the tradition long ago when the control of the fort came back to Marathas after changing hands a few times after the legendary battle. His voice reached its peak when he was telling his story to us and his face was glowing with a child like joy. He extended a kulfi to me saying it's his most delicious flavour. So there we were, standing at some 1500ft. above the ground looking down the hill and enjoying an ice cream in such rain. I haven't had a more delicious kulfi ever since then!