Rediscovering the lost art of handmade soda

The writer chances upon a tiny shop in Panjim that still makes soda the old-fashioned way, by hand

The pristine white stairs of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception Church lead down to a busy square in the heart of Panjim. Walk past it and go towards the back of the church, and you'll find that the scenery is quite different. Old trees stand tall behind the chapel, and there are hardly any tourists on this quiet side of the road. On one of my explorations in the area, I discovered a tiny shop that looked like a general store on its first appearance until my eyes fell upon the whiteboard that said, "Mohan Soda Factory—Cold Drink House."

Handmade soda, also called goli soda or marble soda, is hard to find these days. In the age of branded bottles of fizz available at every turn, very few know about the small scale manufacturing of soda.

Business is not great at the Mohan Soda Factory, so owner Manohar Amonkar now sells snacks and regular commercial soda. I spotted a copper still (apparatus for distilling liquids) visible in a room at the back of the shop.

"My father and elder brother ran this shop before me," he said. "There is no money in the business anymore, but I continue to preserve these machines. Making homemade soda is a tradition that people will soon forget, so I need to keep it alive by continuing to make goli soda."

The glass bottles with a marble (goli or ball) stopper inside them were imported from Germany and Portugal by Amonkar's father. These are now kept in a clean pile in a corner.

The old soda machine at his shop can fill three such bottles at one go. The bottles are filled with water, and gas is released into them until the marble rises to the top and stops the entry. The machine has to be hand rotated multiple times during this process.

Amonkar said his father started the business in 1949. The Portuguese officers ( Goa was a Portuguese colony till 1961) relied on the shop for their daily soda. Amonkar's brother Govind took over many years later, but demand had already fallen by that time. The cost of fees and taxes alone became higher than revenue.

"We (Govind and I) knew this business wouldn't bring us sustenance, but it's like magic watching the machine at work," said Amonkar. "I want people to remember that once, soda used to be handmade in small batches. It's an art."

As I sat down with Amonkar and sipped on the glass of soda he brought out for me, I relished the natural and authentic taste. I am glad that I got a chance to sit and enjoy a drink made with love at a tiny soda shop in Panjim trying to keep a tradition alive.

(Chandreyi Bandyopadhyay is a marketing communications professional and a freelance writer, an avid traveller and food lover.)

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