Ach, ya wee Lassi

To make the lassi, which accompanied my breakfast parantha at a hole-in-the-(literal)-wall restaurant in Shahjahanabad (Old Delhi), the young barefoot man carefully cut open a small plastic bag of yoghurt with a pair of scissors whose blades were no bigger than his thumbnail.

Having emptied its contents into a broad-lipped stainless-steel bowl, he proceeded to add no fewer than five heaping cups of sugar along with an imprecise measurement of water plus the milky dregs from the bowl of the previous batch.

Then he turned on a droning, hand-held electric mixer (the modern utensil) and stirred the concoction to a frothy finish.

Fortunately, one batch of sweet lassi, it turned out, serves four or five customers at once as, though delicious and refreshing, my cup still gave me more of a sugar buzz than I'm accustomed to in the morning.