From childhood till now, how many kinds of roti have you eaten? Is it a part of your daily meal? Roti is not a meal in itself but it enhances a meal, makes it complete. Not just in meals but it also completes and enhances people’s life. This documentary project is about how repeatedly cooking the same thing (even twice a day), daily impacts peoples lives and the stories that lie in them, not just making, but eating, serving and working for roti also has a huge impact. What place chapati holds in the heart, work and life of people of different cultural, educational and economic backgrounds from a granddaughter to her grandmother and how their narratives vary.
This documentary is a small part of a larger project where I would like to document the farmers who grow wheat, the workers who help the farmers, the distributors who bring the grains to the city, the retailers who sell, the grinders who make the flour out of the grains, chefs who cook at gurudwara or alike kitchens for large groups, the thelas, the five-star hotel’s chef. With the part I have done now there is repetition in similarities as well as repetition in differences. How each one has a different story but there’s an overlap of emotions felt. Where each one grew in a very different environment each one has more than one emotion attached roti.
It’s interesting how each one speaks about home-cooked roti though a lot of people love going out to eat North Indian food just for the variety of the Indian breads. After eating a lot of fancy rotis from restaurants one feels like going back home to eat the simple roti with a simpler vegetable curry. Is it the feeling of eating at home? Or is it the one who makes it? There’s so much to understand and realise about relationships through roti.
There’s a saying which used to be popular in a lot Indian household which meant that the way to a husband’s heart is through his stomach. This means that to win the heart of her husband, she is expected to know how to cook very well. With changing times, have this thought process changed, eradicated or evolved? I personally feel it is evolved that’s why my documentary has only women. Though I took interviews of men too for my personal understanding on how differently they perceive it as. What are the similarities? Another interesting thing observed is 5 sensories involved while making the roti. There’s a pattern in which the sound evolves and it repeats with every person, though each person has a different pattern.
Roti making is an art. It involves lots of coordination and doing multiple tasks at once; shaping the dough, eating it and buttering it. There’s a very consistent balance needed while shaping the dough, making the dough and even heating it. Though the one who makes the vegetable curry is more appreciated, each time the roti maker is taken for granted. It’s funny how still roti considered that roti is one of the most difficult things to learn.
Amongst the contrast and irony, stereotypes and contemporary thoughts, making and eating, roti simply exists.
