Jeeraka Soda

We weren’t walking through lanes when he introduced me to Jeeraka soda. It was one of those Kerala evenings. He had come home for the weekend, and we did what we always did. He picked me up on his bike, and we rode aimlessly like teenagers who knew exactly where they wanted to be.

Sobha City became our quiet corner. We never did much there, just sat, talked, shared silences that didn’t feel empty. On the ride back, with the sun folding into the sky behind us, he stopped the bike near a tiny shop I wouldn’t have noticed.

“You’ve never tried this?” he asked, already walking toward the rusted fridge humming in the corner.

'Jeeraka soda', it sounded medicinal, like something my grandmother might recommend after biriyani.

He handed me the bottle and said, “It tastes like spice and heartbreak.”

I laughed. I didn’t know how much of it would turn out to be true.

The first sip was confusing, salty, and tangy, with cumin punching through the bubbles. My tongue didn’t understand what it was drinking. But he looked at me like he’d handed me a piece of his childhood, so I smiled and took another gulp. Maybe that’s how love begins, not always with comfort, but with confusion you’re willing to return to.

After long bike rides, with me hugging him tightly all the way to Kochi, or after he picked me up from the railway station when we hadn’t seen each other in weeks, jeeraka soda became our quiet ritual. A familiar burn. A shared aftertaste. It showed up after homesickness, after longing, after hours of not saying enough and yet feeling everything.

Then came the breakup. It wasn’t explosive. Just one of those quiet endings where you don’t bleed but you bruise for weeks. I stopped texting. He stopped showing up. But my body kept craving jeeraka soda like a Pavlovian ache. 

Like my taste buds hadn’t gotten the memo that he was gone. So I kept drinking it.

At first, it was uncomfortable, sipping and sobbing, a soft kind of torture. But then, something shifted. I started to like it on my own terms.

The fizz.

The salt.

The way it made my throat burn before settling. I began walking to that same rusted shop by myself. I didn’t ask for two straws. It’s funny. He gave me so many things, a laugh I still remember, songs I now skip, and Jeeraka soda. And somehow, that’s one of the many things that stayed.

Now, when I drink it, it doesn’t taste like him anymore. It tastes like the crimson sunset behind the coconut trees, their fronds fanning out in the wind like tired dancers stretching after a long day. The rhythmic hum of a sleepy shop. The comfort of finding my way back home.

That small bottle of jeeraka soda has become my own ritual, something steady to return to on days that feel uncertain. 

It makes sure to remind me that love doesn’t always have to vanish with a person. It lingers, reshaping itself into something gentler, something one can carry without pain. The first sip that was once confusing, sharp and almost too much is now softer, familiar, like something I can lean into.

And maybe that’s the sweetest part of it all,

That, which once began as his memory, now belongs entirely to me.

Parvathy Sreeprakash