Return of the bubbly Banta

The sight of goli sodas took me back to my Kanchipuram days

Recently, I stopped at a neighbourhood juice shop in Chennai and noticed, to my utter surprise and disbelief, a crate of Bantas, which we call goli soda in Tamil. I immediately cancelled my order for grape juice and opted for a bottle of Banta Orange instead. Before the advent of Fanta Orange, from the Coca-Cola company, I used to relish Banta Orange. Those were my carefree days in Kanchipuram, when I would worship goli sodas like they were holy devas.

Among three flavours of Banta, I preferred orange. Bantas were not made in sophisticated factories. They were made under thatched roofs in a homely style and manner by rustic hands.

In Kanchipuram’s Addisonpet and Rangasami Kulam, rows of big shops selling Bantas were a common sight. The shops would display rows of colourful soda bottles with marble in their necks on multi-tiered shelves, and the mere sight of them would quench half our thirst on hot summer days. These shops would do brisk business when crowds of people coming out of nearby cinema theatres descended on them with parched throats. Even a dozen hands employed by these shops were not enough to manage the thirsty, impatient customers. The air would be filled with the sound of Banta bottles being popped open and the whoosh of CO2 being released. At just 6 paise (an ana) a bottle, Bantas were an affordable delight.

Bantas dominated the shops until soft drinks in capped bottles resembling the Qutub Minar flooded the market.

Normally, the soda bottles were opened with a wooden circular cap-like contrivance, but during peak business hours, the employees opened them with bare hands: they inserted their thumb or index finger into the bottle’s mouth and pushed the marble down the bottle’s throat deftly. I wondered how their thumbs withstood the harsh treatment repeatedly. Many of these hands employed in soda shops had permanently swollen thumbs. Brash youths of those days used to open their Banta bottles with their tongues to impress onlookers.

Even when one came out of second show cinemas at the dead of night (those days, night shows were called second shows), Bantas would be available as the shops remained open well into the night as if to quench your thirst after an edge-of-the-seat climax – a clash of the titans MGR and Nambiar.

Along with the popular flavours of soda, the shopkeepers would keep a few bottles of ginger beer for people with stomach problems. I still remember the crates filled with water, keeping the Bantas cool.

Many, like me, hanker after old things, sights, and practices. The reappearance of Bantas on the shelves of cool drink shops in Chennai has brought back fond memories. It’s true that old is gold, and good old things may get buried in the sands of time, but they resurface with a burnished glitter.