Phalsa (also spelled falsa) is the small, dusky purple-black berry of Grewia asiatica, a fast-growing shrubby tree of the Indian subcontinent, and it is above all a fruit of the hottest weeks of the year — a fleeting summer berry, refreshingly tart-sweet with a distinctive sour, faintly astringent bite, that ripens just as the pre-monsoon heat peaks. Rarely eaten in quantity out of hand, it is prized crushed and strained into sharbat: a deep magenta, sweet-sour cooling drink sold from roadside carts across India and Pakistan and drunk as a traditional antidote to summer heat.