Giving Indian Roti All the Attention it Has Always Deserved

I love Indian food, and the pride associated with saying so radiates without any pretence. At the same time, I dislike it when people seem unappreciative of what makes our food unique and resourceful - nothing explains this better than the Roti in its many indigenous forms, which I have grown to appreciate over the years.

Extremely fresh roti: Right off the tawa | Crispier | Steaming Hot

Fresh but smeared with desi ghee for a soft texture is the top-tier performer in this domain. Still fresh but left slightly more on the flame for some added crispiness and smeared with desi ghee, these fresh as the grass rotis can be kept soft with little crustiness or turned into Indian bread masterpieces by cranking up the crispiness. Ultra-crispy, the holy grail of ghar ki chapati, allowing desi ghee to gain entry through the crisped, broken surface that allows the ghee to penetrate deeper. If you are someone who does not like the ghee on the roti, you are missing out on life’s simplest and tastiest treats. The non-ghee fresh roti has a substantially shorter lifespan. You are much better off consuming it within a couple of minutes off the tawa. If your secondary sabzi, following the dal for the day, is a bit gooey, like paneer kee bhurjee or baigan ka bharta, the excessively crispy roti creates the perfect contrast. This is like eating those Mexican wraps where the fillings are a bit saucy & soft, placed carefully inside a tough bread. If you are having your meal in Delhi’s winters, the fresh roti with a few drops of ghee dripping makes up for any cooking deficits. Even yesterday’s leftovers seem to taste better when that perfect blend of cooked dough and a bit of ghee is churned, turned, clawed into, and mercilessly chewn by your teeth.

Not-that-Fresh | But Not Stale | Hot & Quite Soft | Not Crispy

It so often happens that there is a time lag of a few minutes from the roti being taken off the tawa and finding its rightful place on my plate, nestled comfortably on the sides by some onion, cucumber, and the primary sabzi for the day. This form of roti is rather acceptable and usually the norm given the crazy schedule where my meal timings have taken a serious battering in the last 4 years. This inherently softer version of Delhi’s chapati might be the mainstay in most households, PGs, workplaces, and across the lunch spread of millions who lunch parked somewhere, and those who have to stand and quickly swallow their food.

For any Indian lady who is proud to be the sole meal-time caretaker of a household, the performance of this not-that-fresh chapati is a testament to their cooking skills. You order the wrong type of atta, and these fresh but not-so-hot rotis will develop a dry texture very quickly. Rolled too thin, these reasonably fresh rotis will lose their softness even sooner. You have to know how our forefathers conquered the art of making chapatis and keeping them fresh beyond a few hours!

Not A Typical Roti | Hybrid Version | Borrowed from Desi Parantha

I hope you have all encountered and supported the cause of the Semi-parantha. If not, there is something unhealthy cooking in your kitchen or in the minds of those trusted with cooking for you. The Semi-parantha is Indian cooking’s gift to those who want a bit of extra flavor to their everyday eating, but without consuming the calorie-dense typical parantha. The Semi-parantha has fewer layers to it. It is not a roti or a wholesome parantha. In this identity crisis lies its beauty. It is quicker to make and yet delivers the excellence you just would not expect. You can have it for lunch, breakfast, or dinner. However, Semi-paranthas are not the best bet for workplace lunches. Kept a bit thinner and pressed down using minimal oil or ghee, they tend to develop that hard, coarse crustiness quickly. Have them fresh or within a couple of hours from the time of being packed with you in mind. Semi-paranthas will not fail you!

Muchda-Kuchda Rotis are Mom’s Love & Not Artistry

Tracing the evolution of this form of Indian roti, it was found that our overzealous fore-mothers realized that the humble dhaba-wala or the tandoor artist was stealing their thunder. These guys were doing something unbelievably simple and still so impressive that our ancestral women just couldn’t let go. They carefully examined the cooks across North India and realized that these guys would give the fresh, crispy roti a big crush at the end before serving it. The crush would make a slight sound and unevenly distribute the remains of the roti’s upper crust. To the foodie, this simple torture technique yielded a magical result - the basic roti started looking exotic, as if it had been subjected to handcrafted ingenuity. Enter 2025, and our moms are still doing it. You would imagine forgiving the unsuspecting commercial cooks and letting go of this tactical move, but NO, they still do it, and honestly, it makes the roti taste even better, by at least 17% as per my psychological interpretation and the non-prevalent research team that I have in the underground bunker of a Scottish castle turned laboratory.

Looks like you are roti-wise uneducated & need the enlightenment!

For starters, you have to explore the various forms in which chapati prevails in your life. 

• To categorize each, have a few bites sans anything else to uncover the real taste.
• Fresh roti with yesterday’s dal vs Morning roti at night with fresh dal is a good learning curve to understand the intricacies.
• Try a roti this winter season with nothing but ghee and some sprinkled shakkar…the combination of cereal and sugarcane sweetness is just magical!
• Rotis that are too chewy are a big turn–off. The person making them clearly does not know the art.
• Roti with achaar is the poorest way to eat it, but remember, the genuinely poor souls might go to sleep without a morsel…count your blessings!
• Rotis play a significant role in keeping you away from the bane of the Western world’s health scare…Dread the Bread!

Roti can be a significant quality check for non-vegetarian dishes prepared at home. This is to test the gravy or the soupy part of the dish, especially the meats. Take a big bite, fold it, and dip it repeatedly until you are sure the roti bite has succumbed to your BDSM actions. Now, eat the roti without any meat or flesh. If it tastes damn good on the first bite…your dish is most likely to be loved.

Some Recommended Roti Explorations & Don’t Dos’ for You

• No combination with curd impresses - just stay away
• Try a warm one with some fresh mustard sauce smeared on it
• Wrap half a roti around a big mass of extra spicy pulao - just try it once
• Rotis don’t handle well with any type of salad - definitely worth a miss
• Never end a meal with a sabzi-less bite - kills the entire journey of supper
• Ask your chief of staff to try preparing the dough with some milk

Small morsels of roti in a big bowl of soupy black grams win over 30 minutes spent with friends talking about EMIs and smoking away. For once, compliment the women in your home for the Roti itself and not reserve the kind words for 7-star dishes - without that nonchalant piece of dough, you wouldn’t have grown up if you happened to have a middle-class Indian upbringing!

Why John Cena is not impressive as a maturing pro-wrestler?

I was just seeing the latest Summerslam match, which had Roman Reigns compete with John Cena. Though there was nothing too impressive or outright dislikeable about the match, I must say that Cena is not balancing the maturing act too well. Many former and recent superstars from the WWE have run the seasoned course a lot better. However, John Cena seems to be struggling. His 16-time World Champion credentials stand, and he still has the physical strength, but largely, he seems a bit lost, and this is why:

1. The boyhood charm is not working anymore

When John Cena started, one thing that caught everybody's attention was his boyish, cute looks. He seemed a bit undercooked and too much of a collegiate wrestler for many, rather than being a serious pro-wrestling contender. However, as things progressed, the same look became a bit of a signature for Cena. Even when he completed a decade in the industry, the clean-shaven face and the short, cropped hair looked the part. Cena seemed blessed with a sort of anti-aging gene - this is what many people had to say, and yes, his chiseled physique only strengthened this image. However, now that Cena is clearly a senior in the industry, the hair is thinning, and the boyish charm is not radiating. The hip-hop mad looks are not delivering. In fact, he seems to be oscillating in a state of confused identities. I compare him to Michael J Fox and Tom Cruise - two more faces that refused to age for the longest time, but when aging did start showing up, it just did not blend into their persona. Cena seems to be going through something similar. The white sneakers and the Bermuda-like ring attire seem to contradict that; along with Triple H, he is perhaps the most experienced ex-champion right now.

Buy It for the Texture alone...

This has been happening for almost four years now—I have been buying shirts purely because of the texture rather than looking at the shades or various hues of the same primary color. I had bought some Khadi shirts almost a decade back and when they started aging, they developed a unique texture. This was not the worn-down, distressed look but something interesting. Something that takes well to repeated washing and light ironing and does not crease a lot and even when it creases, the overall look is not that bad. This texturing thing is akin to a combination of linen, khadi, and cotton - mixed together. 100% cotton is being branded too casually these days. The result is many cotton shirts not looking the part as the thread count is often too low. The texture I am talking about has a subtle hint of the linen, as if in the background with good cotton at the forefront. This fabric blend is hard to define because my interpretation is different from what the package reads. But invariably this is without any type of spandex or elastane that tends to add a polyester-like sheen. Instead, this fabric blend tends to hang rather well rather than clinging too close to the skin. Linen on its own is highly crushable – something I have always hated. Mixed with cotton in the usual form, it tends to lose its essence. My blend is about a fabric that has no see-through features, looks like linen and khadi blended, with a very summery-cotton type aura about it. My shirt shopping for reasons as illogical as the ones discussed here have taken another leap in the work-from-home ecosystem where I am still buying a lot, wearing very little, and hoping beyond reason that I will again get the opportunity to flaunt a few good ones. As of now, on September 7th, 2021, the fact is that buying more clothes is just about feeling good rather than bringing about any practical utility. Have some money? Use it a bit to buy a few moments of happiness and hopefully, some of these worldly possessions will become useful when the new normal goes away and the conventional normal is back!

An apple pie a day can make Jack a less enthusiastic boy
...not my best rhyme by far!

Like anyone who was born in the 80s, I have had some fascination about postcards mailed by people from faraway cities, especially international destinations. As I grew up, traveling seemed to get less challenging, more celebratory and without the premium that people once put on postcards. The traveling demographic today is rather different...so drastically convenient that perhaps a good journey or a memorable trips seems readily attainable. Back in the day, receiving these postcards meant a lot of sighing.

Lohri – yes, it is essentially a Bonfire Thing!

There is a recurring discussion each time it is Lohri time here in Delhi – is this a real festival, why aren’t more people celebrating it or is this just a bonfire that makes people come together? For me, the cheerfulness is essentially about the bonfire thing. In a way, it is the perfect recipe – winter season and the opportunity to light-up a bonfire in metropolitan locales that are inhumanly low on person-to-person interactions, where running into each other seems like a mishap. Lohri carries the aura of coziness in the most literal sense. For the more dedicated Lohri enthusiast, this bonfire is like a beacon of sustaining sub-cultures that are in stark contrast to the city pattern that compartmentalizes and mechanizes our life.

Are your dreams always wintery?

This is a bit strange and somewhat personal – I tend to dream very sporadically and within the realm of visuals that my mind sketches, there is always a preference for winters being the background. As long as I am dreaming about having turned into a father, raising a family, the retirement years or feeling good about my financial might, the landscape is always extreme winter. Really cannot understand the reason for this. There is nothing special I have achieved in this time of the year. In fact, the last two winters have been rather hard on me, financially, health-wise and from an emotional perspective. Even when the mind ruminates about how I can make my mother’s last year’s happier, the setting is always cold, with the temperatures dipping rather drastically. When dreaming about my imaginary baby son, whom I would love to call JUNIOR, the setting is same – the boy-toy is dressed in cute, costume-like woolens.