In 1989, when a small Dinshaw’s ice cream shop opened near our engineering college hostel, it did not arrive with ceremony or symbolism, yet in retrospect, it marked one of those quiet transitions that reveal their significance only years later, when you realize that something subtle in your expectations had shifted.
Until then, dessert meant kulfi sold in matkas or scooped from an iron container balanced on a bicycle, sliced unevenly and handed over without packaging, without branding, and without flavor names that sounded as though they belonged to another geography. It was local, informal, and entirely sufficient for the world we inhabited at the time.
Dinshaw’s felt different even before we tasted it, because the humming freezer, the neatly sealed tubs, and the printed labels suggested order, variety, and something that felt unmistakably modern. The menu listed flavors that did not exist in our childhood vocabulary, and the very act of choosing from them carried a quiet thrill.
On the first day, a group of us walked in more out of curiosity than affordability, and because hostel finances were always stretched thin, we did what students often do when confidence exceeds cash: we told the shop owner that since we were from the engineering college hostel nearby, he should give all of us free ice cream. It was an audacious request delivered with just enough humor to make refusal awkward, and to our surprise, he agreed.
That first spoonful of butterscotch tasted unlike anything we had grown up with, not simply because it was sweet, but because it carried texture in the form of crunchy caramel bits and a layered flavor that felt deliberate rather than improvised, as though someone had engineered delight rather than stumbled upon it. Even the name itself carried intrigue, and why butterscotch, of all flavors, became the one we reached for is a story for another day, because that choice contained its own quiet psychology that deserves separate telling.
We did not become daily customers, since our budgets never allowed such indulgence, but we returned when we could, and slowly the brand embedded itself into memory. Even today, in a world overflowing with artisanal combinations and international chains offering dozens of options that would have sounded exotic in 1989, butterscotch remains one of my defaults, and I suspect that preference has less to do with taste than with imprint.
A few years later, after I had started working in Mumbai around 1993-94, another ice cream moment etched itself even more deeply into memory, not because it was grand, but because of how little we had then. It was New Year’s Eve, and as always, the date had arrived at the end of the month when money was tight, and celebration felt aspirational rather than practical, and we knew very clearly that we had little to spare.
One of our friends quietly stepped out and returned with ice cream for all of us, just a scoop each, nothing extravagant and certainly nothing performative, simply a decision that the year should not turn without something sweet to mark it. I do not remember what flavor I had that night, but I remember the feeling with such clarity that it still surprises me even now.
In that moment, when none of us had much to spare, the gesture felt larger than its cost. Over the years, I have received generosity far greater in monetary value, dinners more expensive, gifts more elaborate, and assistance more visible. Yet, that scoop on a financially barren New Year’s Eve stands taller in memory than most of them.
Perhaps what endures is not the magnitude of the act but the proportion of sacrifice behind it.
People often say that when you do good, good returns many times over, that karma keeps an invisible ledger and compounds quietly across years; I do not know whether the universe accounts in that way, but I do know that small acts at the right moment anchor themselves in memory for decades, and the friend who bought those scoops probably never imagined how permanent the gesture would become.
The first scoop introduced us to novelty and branding, while the second revealed something quieter about friendship and proportion, and both remain sweet in memory for reasons that have very little to do with flavor.