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Back in Ribandar, Eunice moves slowly through her garden, brushing dried leaves from a kokum plant. At the mention of orchata, her wrinkled face breaks into a smile.
“I first drank orchata in my early teens; it was a family favourite,” she recalls.
It wasn’t made at her home. Her family would source bottles prepared by the Coelhos from a handful of shops in Panaji: Cappuccina Bar and Restaurant, Farm Products and Lija Camotim.
“We would especially buy it during summer, and drink it with lots of ice.”
One particularly difficult summer, after giving birth to her first child, she remembers surviving almost entirely on orchata. Years later, her daughter-in-law would find herself doing the same.
“It had been almost 30 years since it was last available,” she says. “I was craving its sweet, almondy flavour and decided to try making it myself.”
What followed was years of trial and error. “I tried different proportions, and after five to seven summers, I finally got it right,” she says, beaming. She laughs at the memory. She simply wanted to taste the orchata she remembered growing up.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, demand grew unexpectedly, turning it into a small, pre-order-based business.
Eunice uses a mix of almonds and cashews to prepare her concentrate. The cashews, she says, lend it a creamier texture. She blends the concentrate with equal parts milk before diluting it with water for a silkier consistency.
Guilhermina Vas, Eunice's friend and former colleague, grew up in Panjim's Altinho neighbourhood. Small-framed and animated, she jumps into the conversation before Eunice has finished speaking, eager to offer another memory.
Her gold-rimmed glasses slide to the edge of her nose as she laughs. "Orchata isn't for everyone. In my house, I was the only one who liked it."
Her neighbour, Dona Zenia, who lived two houses away, celebrated her own birthday every year with homemade orchata.
"I used to look forward to that day just for the orchata," she laughs. "My sisters, however, didn't care for it much."
“Ice makes all the difference,” they both insist.
I ask Eunice what drinking orchata feels like after all these years, what memory it stirs.
“It makes me happy,” she says simply.
“Doesn’t it remind you of your mother?” Guilhermina asks.
Eunice fiddles with the base of her glass. Her smile softens, and for a moment her eyes glisten.
"I immediately think of my mother, returning home in the afternoons after playing, asking her for a glass of orchata," she says.
She pauses.
“One glass was never enough.”
Her mother, she says, would take a bottle she had stored in the family’s icebox and prepare a glass for her.
“It reminds me of simple, happy times in the home I grew up in at Chorao, just across the river.
“When people drink it, they often close their eyes. It transports them back to childhood, or to a period 20 or 30 years ago, when a grandmother or an aunt would make it,” says Oliver. “It feels deeply personal, attached to a memory, to a person, or to a moment.”
When people drink it, they often close their eyes. It transports them back to childhood
by OLIVER FERNANDES, THE GOAN KITCHEN
Sitting on Eunice’s verandah, it becomes clear that orchata survives because of the people who remember making it, serving it and drinking it together. The recipes can be recreated. The worlds they belonged to cannot.
The older generation that held on to these recipes has passed on, while the younger generations who inherited them moved away from Goa in search of better economic prospects.
The social lines that once determined who could access certain ingredients have also shifted. Ingredients that once signified privilege became more accessible, and the exclusivity gradually lost its allure.
The Goa that produced those orchatas has changed, too. Overtourism and rapid development have replaced fields with resorts and apartment blocks, altered coastal skylines and reshaped once-quiet villages.
At the river, a speedboat whirs past. Ribandar, with its pastel-hued homes and winding roads, is slowly changing. Yellow-plated tourist taxis stream through its narrow streets. Old houses stand abandoned or give way to apartment blocks. And Orchata, itself, has largely disappeared from family tables, too.
The drink’s history is more layered than nostalgia alone. In India, food often carries the weight of caste, and orchata is no exception. The ingredients, the occasions when it was served, and the households associated with it all signified privilege, wealth, and colonial connections.
