Indian drinks

Almost every Indian drink is built on the same three moves: something sour, something sweet, and salt. Nimbu pani, aam panna, jaljeera and kokum sharbat are all that arrangement in different proportions, which is why they quench rather than cloy — a purely sweet drink makes you thirstier.

Most of them are also concentrates. Aam panna, kokum sharbat and nannari all keep for weeks or months in a bottle in the fridge, so the work happens once and a glass takes twenty seconds after that.

Nothing here contains alcohol. That is deliberate rather than squeamish: these are the drinks that get made for a house full of people on a hot afternoon, and half of them are what you give somebody who has just come in off the street.