AFOVA New Letter 2 of Year 2021

Section 6 - Memoirs CV 2 No. 02 / 2021 Page 173 of 332 10 My Memories of Madras Late Mrs Chitkala Govindaswamy Genre: Reminiscence adras, the city I was born in and brought up has changed so completely. Many of the buildings I knew are gone and the environs have altered beyond recognition. All my life I have been passionate about ice-cream! I can say with absolute certainty that no place in India or abroad has any ice-cream like what we used to get at the Elphinstone Ice Cream parlour on Mount Road. We youngsters would wait for the regular treat of ice-cream, at Elphinstone. My favourites in those days were the Jafarco Special, Peach Melba and Tutti-frutti; in fact any ice-cream served in tall glasses with long spoons. Later, when I tried Chocolate Delight I fell for it hook, line and sinker! I had it every time I went there; whenever the regular waiter saw me there, he would promptly bring me a Chocolate Delight! The charm of the parlour was its ambience and decorations not to be found elsewhere. One particular picture of interest was the poster which I believed to be a scene from Rio de Janeiro, judging by the huge rock at the rear. I was fascinated by the lady in the picture in a dress in myriads of colours, a huge headdress with enormous feathers, the infinite variety of birds, flora and fauna in the background and the little monkey perched on the lady’s shoulder. The other great attraction here was that we could park our car in the Round Tana parking area, which has now given way to Annadurai’s statue. One could just signal to a waiter at ice-cream parlour to come over to the car and take our order. He would briskly run to and fro and in 5 to 10 mins serve us ice-creams on a tray! What a luxury it was to M