Continental Cardboard Chapatti's !!

Aah it was after a pretty long time that I tried my hand at cooking. I remember when I was in UK I paid in pounds to have rice, curry and other typical Indian fares. Whats worse was I was supposed to tip those serving us and that hurts since earning money wasn’t easy at that point of time. Heheheheh!!!!

All credit for getting me to cook goes to my roommate Praveen who himself an excellent cook would ask me to help him out in the kitchen. The Andhra fare that he would dish out was so superb that there would always be a steady stream of visitors bent on tasting what he would dole out.

But once classes started and work schedules took over, we had to fend for ourselves. Once my pockets began to go empty every time in the middle of the week I realized that things had to change drastically which meant I needed to start cooking at home.

I started off by trying my hand at the regular south indian fares like rice and curries. Initially as expected it turned out to be disasters in disguise much like how my twin sis started to learn cooking maybe worse but fortunately I never had anyone running for a bottle of pills or to the doc immediately on eating my fare.

Slowly I built up a somewhat expertise and I had my own fan following who would come home every weekend for tasting my cooking. Anyways it’s a thing that’s 3 years old. Ever since I came back to my home country to start my professional career I never had to step into the kitchen again. Since I would always have my mom or sister who would do the cooking and me the eating 

Last night I had my cousin Saji come over. Since it was a long weekend we had the time of our life and ate out most of the time during the weekend. Comes Monday and the prospect of going out to eat once again was frosty. After much persuasion Saji and me decided to cook at home. He wanted to eat chapattis and like a good bro I agreed to make some.

Its been years I ever tried my hands at cooking and hence my skills were rustic at best. I started out with much gusto kneading the dough for the chapattis. After much fooling around I realized that its not exactly the shape or the color that would develop when mom used to make.

Since this is the information age, I immediately dialed my local contacts in essence my colleagues who cook for their husbands at home. Once she got over the initial sneering and comments she advised me to add oil and water ( I hope I have the order correct) to smoothen the dough and get it ready.

I kept at it with much fervor and after what I felt was an eon, I found that the dough stuck together but it was still dry. I added more water/oil and got a roughly light brown color to the dough. I thought I had done enough and went about making the side dish to go about it. As me and my cousin chatted sporadically , I went about expressing how I feel the chapattis would come out good while the side dish would be a massacre. Boy !!! Was I in for a BIG surprise 

Initial Tasks (cutting veggies, washing them etc) done the cooking process began. Doing it side by side the side dish was done pretty fast and without much problem, fortunately this time I got it correct and all including the color and salt was correct. This boosted my confidence and I went about making the chapattis.

Once I began to spread the rolled dough about, I realized its no child’s play. Suddenly I was faltering and the lack of experience was quite easily seen. Uneven spreading of the dough, inconsistent shape, uneven thickness etc were the highlights. In between bouts of light banter my cousin and me were constantly reminded of the fact that its this that is going to be our dinner for the night 

Finally what seemed like an EON, we were done. The highlights of the entire exercise were as follows.

$. Chapattis that very closely resembled the shape of each continent on Mother Earth.

$. Whitish brown external texture which reminded one of cardboards that we would use for artistic pastimes in our childhood.

$. Hardened shape which emphasized the fact that they could be used as discus or a potential weapon to cause heavy bodily harm to our opponents.

$. And last but not the least the unique distinction of producing “Weapons of Mass Destruction” with maximum effort, minimal understanding and wastage.


Bottom line chapattis were ready and so was the side dish and that’s how we had our first “Continental Card Board Chapattis”.


Efforts are on to have them patented by the (UNBBT) United Nations Board for Bull Shit Technology situated at Bull Street as Weapons for Mass Destruction (WMD).

That would be another feather to my cap, watch this space for updates ……………..