A cup of chilled sweet melon juice, bright orange in colour, with tiny chunks of fruit floating in it. Savour the taste and sip it slowly, it is almost enough to forget the scorching summer heat.
Venkatesan has his musk melon stall on a shady platform, opposite Rani Meyyammai Girls School on R. K. Mutt Road, Mandaveli. He sets up his stall here every summer.
A table at which he sits, with a stack of the fruit heaped on it, a tall vessel filled with the juice, some paper cups and heaps of melons around him complete his stall. He has a couple of thermocol ice boxes filled with ice and a container of sugar to add while making the juice.
A cup of the sweet stuff is priced at Rs. 15.
But the drought has affected this business too. ‘Usually I get my supply of the fruit from Ponneri throughout the summer. This year, there is no more fruit to be had from there. I have to look elsewhere, maybe near Thiruperunkundram’, he says.
