‘Energee’ if you’re a leaf from the same book as me, then the mere mention of this word will take you on the journey back in time. Of blue & cream coloured stalls, selling milk in blue plastic packets & foil-capped glass bottles. Lassi & non-flavoured cow’s milk too. 

Decades have gone by with generation after generation being raised on a steady diet of Aarey Dairy’s milk products. I recently stopped by the dairy in Worli, the stall outside a pale shadow of the glorious past, just like the edifice in the background. 

The first sip itself revealed a change in formula, the pineapple Energee tasting a lot different than those sweet memories from our childhood. 

Twirled the bottle around in the hand, and learned in horror that another Bombay icon, the once-delightful Energee, sold outside the Aarey Dairy was processed at some dairy in Shirur, Pune!

And with that, another city memory, another reminder of the awesome childhood that we had, got sacrificed at the altar of outsourcing. 

Maybe I’m just noticing this, maybe it has been this way for a while now, or even been so, from the beginning – I don’t know for sure. All I do know, is that the taste is lost & all that’s left now are those lingering memories of beautiful times past…