Can an ice cream be designed to withstand the Indian summer?

In middle school, I decided to spend my life’s net worth in saved-up coins. The plan pretty much carried itself out when a thallu vandi labelled “Arun” in bright red letters began showing up at my school gate. For many months, I bought ice cream from this cart after school almost every day, often enough to even have an open tab with the Arun anna.

It always went the same way. I hand him a combination of coins totaling Rs 10, a vanilla cup peels open and, by the third spoonful, the surface catches a sheen as the sun takes over. By the sixth, a rivulet escapes the rim, and then there is no going back.

There is something really inconvenient about how quickly ice cream melts in the Indian summer. Not because melting is surprising. Of course it melts. The disappointment is how little time it takes to give up. The product sold today feels like it was never designed for the place it lives in.

Indian summers are not gentle, and ice cream here moves through heat, only briefly interrupted by refrigeration. Consider the journey of an ice cream tub. It leaves the factory in a refrigerated truck to reach the distributor, from...

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