While everyone frets about linguistic imperialism, I think the North Indian culinary hegemony is a more serious issue. And, here I hold the Punjabis responsible. The world over, Punjabi food -- in its myriad deconstructed forms -- is synonymous with Indian cuisine. Arguably, Punjab can stake claims on GM tags for tandoori chicken or chicken tikka but to do it for parathas will be a serious breach of intellectual property rights -- not just of other states but several countries around the globe. So, North Indians would be well advised to go easy on their paratha chauvinism.
Like many foods of the subcontinent, the origin of the paratha, which is essentially a flatbread, can be traced to West Asia. Sonal Ved writes in her highly readable book Whose Samosa is it Anyway? that waraki is the Persian name for paratha -- for which the dough is kneaded with milk and has layers that peel off. From there it travelled eastwards evolving along the way. Some believe the Chinese scallion pancake which resembles the paratha may have come via the Silk Route first introduced by the Uighurs. Contrary to what the Punjabis would like us to believe, the Kerala Muslim community did not learn to make parotta from them. Architect and food anthropologist Kurush Dalal believes that it arrived there directly from Central Asia, which had maritime contact with the Malabar coast for a long time. From there, it continued its journey further to Sri Lanka and South East Asia where it is called roti canai. Also, clearly the South Indian parotta, which is made of maida, is distinctly different in character from the atta-based parathas of the North.
There is little doubt, however, the various North Indian flat breads -- like naan, kulcha, khameeri and tandoori roti -- were all imported across the Khyber Pass through Kabul (think of Kabuli naan) and Peshawar. Like the terrain it had to pass through, the breads acquired a more rough and rugged form shedding the refinement of maida, which must have been difficult to procure, for coarse whole wheat. But, how did the modern paratha come into being?
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I am wary of asking questions about food to my Punjabi friends. Though they love to eat, their idea of culinary history is usually as wonky as Punjabi humour. Once a Sikh friend tried to convince me that the term “Kukkad-Shukkar” came from the customary pastime of enjoying chicken and whisky on Friday nights. But a friend's mother had a more plausible theory. She told me the genesis of the stuffed paratha was using the leftover vegetable and dough of the previous night by making parathas out of them. That explains the different kinds of parathas -- alu, gobi, paneer, dal and so on. Over time, it became a comfort food genre in its own right when many new varieties were invented -- like cheese, soya, mushroom etc (thankfully we don’t have a Manchurian paratha yet). But, according to her, in interior Punjab and villages, the old practice of using carryover sabzi is still followed.
I was posted in Delhi during the late nineties. On some days when we worked late in office -- like on month-ends waiting till the last sales order was punched in -- a bunch of us would drive up to dhabas in Murthal at the Haryana border just before Sonepat for parathas. Especially on winter nights, warmed up by rum or whisky, to be served hot parathas with dollops of white butter was a treat for meeting the month’s sales targets. But now those dhabas have turned into 5-Star restaurants. On my last visit, I was amused to see how they competed among each other with some offering to pay for the road toll at the border, though I don’t know how they are overcoming the issue of fast tags on highways. The original Murthal parathas, I remember, were fried. But now one gets various other types of parathas such as tawa and tandoori as well. Earlier, it used to be a minor adventure going to the Parathe Wala Gali in Chandni Chowk. Now the Metro has made it more accessible. However, my new favourite is Moolchand Paratha below the Metro Station, when I am in a reckless mood to risk death by calories.
The Kerala parotta is a class apart. Parotta and beef fry sold at street side stalls is a symbol of its sub-regionalism. The standard Malabar paratha, deceptively similar to lachha paratha of the North in appearance but vastly different in form, comes in layers made from maida dough which is made with addition of oil and left to leaven for a long time. So it comes in layers. However, it is not the only type of parotta they eat. The other very popular variant is kothu parotta - in which the parotta is shredded into small pieces and tossed with meat (beef or chicken), eggs, gravy and vegetables. Across the border, Tamil Nadu has its own veechu parotta, folded into a square shape, which when stuffed with minced meat becomes Ceylon paratha. An egg parotta may be considered to be a parotta version of the egg dosa and distantly resembles the baida roti of Mumbai. Madurai is famous for its bun parotta -- which as the name suggests is shaped like a bun, fluffy inside, and ideal to have by dipping it into curries.
The Mughals obviously gave their own twist to the paratha. But, I doubt if they had anything to do with the Kolkata 'Moglai' paratha, which was probably the invention of the iconic -- now almost defunct -- Anadi Cabin. The predominant ingredient of Moglai is chopped onions, which is mixed with ginger-garlic paste, large quantities of diced green chillies and cilantro leaves which are fried to make the masala. The stuffing is then spread in the middle of a thinly rolled maida sheet on a tawa into which is added the beaten egg. Then the paratha is folded and fried on both sides and served with a light turmeric based alu curry. In fact, the Bangladeshi Dhakai paratha may have some Mughlai connection, though Tamil friends insist it is nothing but their own porucha parotta from Virudhunagar. It is a deep fried layered poori with a hollow centre into which is added cholar daal (split Bengal gram dal) or a thick potato subzi. The Bengali petai (beaten) parotta has a resemblance with the Kerala kothu parotta but instead of meat it is usually had with hot ghugni (curried dry yellow peas).
According to the food historian K T Achaya, the word paratha is derived from Sanskrit and is mentioned in Manasollasa, a 12th-century Sanskrit encyclopaedia compiled by Someshvara III, a Western Chalukya king, who ruled from present-day Karnataka. But, I draw a line when he says the Maharashtrian puran poli is a form of paratha. To me, it is a sweet cousin of the Bihari dal poori. Indian indentured labourers carried the paratha to Mauritius, Maldives, South East Asia and the Caribbean, where it's variously called farata, prata and oil roti. But the name I love is “buss-up shut” that they use in Trinidad, because it looks like a busted up or tattered shirt. A pretty good description I would say!
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(Sandip Ghose is an author and current affairs commentator. He tweets @SandipGhose.)