Mooli Parantha

Deb Uncle’s Mooli Paratha & The Slippery Slopes of Calcutta

If there was one thing my friend’s Uncle- Deb Uncle.. loved more than cricket, it was cooking. Unlike most men of his generation, who believed the kitchen was a foreign land meant only for their mothers and wives, Deb Uncle had proudly declared, "Aami ranna korte shikbo!" (I will learn to cook!). Of course, this declaration was met with his mother’s skeptical glance and his father’s exasperated sigh.

Now, Deb Uncle’s mother was a typical Bengali matriarch- a woman with an iron hand in the kitchen and a soft spot for anyone who finished their plate of rice and fish curry without complaining. She believed in the sacred power of mustard oil, used panch phoron like a seasoned magician, and had a deep distrust of anything North Indian.

"Mooli paratha? Ki romoshkor! Ei sob Punjabir khabar!" (Mooli paratha? Nonsense! All this is Punjabi food!) she would say whenever someone suggested making anything that wasn’t Bengali.

But Deb Uncle was determined. His fascination with mooli paratha began when he first started working in Delhi, when his office colleague, Sharmaji, brought homemade parathas for lunch. One bite into the crispy, butter-laden, perfectly spiced delight, and Deb Uncle knew- this was his calling.

Bidisha Aunty’s Kitchen (read -A Mother’s Skepticism)🧐 

Bidisha Aunty’s kitchen in Calcutta- a small, dimly lit space packed with steel dabbas labeled in Bengali (mishti, bhaat, dal, and some suspicious ones simply marked "X"), and a rickety gas stove that had to be lit with a matchstick while simultaneously praying to Ma Kali that the flame caught before your eyebrows disappeared. The centerpiece of this sacred space was a radio that constantly played “Chirodini Tumi Je Aamar.” Every morning, Deb Uncle would watch his mother perform her daily kitchen rituals- heating mustard oil until it smoked ("Without the smell of burning mustard oil, how will we even know we are alive?" she once said), grinding fresh masalas on the sil-batta, and expertly frying beguni while simultaneously yelling at the neighborhood kids playing cricket near the kitchen window.

The Great Paratha Experiment🔬 

Now, learning to make mooli paratha was no joke. Deb Uncle, used to his mother’s fish curries and luchis, thought, "How hard can this be?"

Hard.

His first attempt was a horror show. The dough was too hard, the stuffing was too wet, and when he tried rolling it out, the grated mooli filling oozed out like lava. When he finally managed to cook one, it looked like a burnt map of West Bengal.

His mother watched this spectacle, shaking her head. "Tomar biye-r por bou toh eka eke bhaag jabe!" (After marriage, your wife will run away on the first day!) she laughed.

Frustrated but determined, he sought help from the true paratha masters- the neighborhood aunties.

The Aunty Brigade & Cooking Lessons 📝 

The aunties of the building were a force to be reckoned with. There was Punjabi Aunty from the second floor, UP Aunty from the third, and Bihari Aunty from the ground floor- all experts in different styles of stuffed parathas. Seeing a Bengali man interested in their recipes, they were delighted.

"Aree waah, Deb babu! Aap toh asli damad banne wale ho kisi Punjabi ghar mein!" Punjabi Aunty teased.
"Beta, seekh lo! Biwi toh impress ho jaayegi!" said UP Aunty.

Deb Uncle learned the secrets- how to knead soft dough, the right way to roll out the paratha without breaking it, and most importantly, how to fry it with enough butter to make even Sharmaji jealous.

The Monsoon Madness & Slipping Uncles 🌧️ 

Now, monsoons in Calcutta were a different level of disaster. Their building, like most old Calcutta buildings, had a sloped entrance that became a skating rink the moment the first rain dropped.

Every year, like clockwork, the Annual Monsoon Slipping Championship began.

• Mr. Sen from the fourth floor would always slip while carrying fish from the market.
• The neighborhood postman, despite delivering letters for twenty-five years, still fell at least twice a week.
• And then there was Sharmaji- the catalyst of the Mooli Paratha mission.. who once slipped so dramatically that he ended up sitting on the steps, dazed, with his tiffin box flying in the opposite direction.

“Deb, yeh Kolkata ka monsoon nahi... yeh toh punishment hai!" he wailed.

And, of course, Deb Uncle wasn’t immune. One fateful evening, returning home triumphantly after buying a fresh packet of atta, he confidently strutted up the building’s entrance- only to slip and land straight on his paratha-making hand.

His mother, instead of sympathy, simply said, "Ekhon jaa, cha kheye aay (Now go, have some tea and come back)."

Mooli Paratha & A Full Circle Moment 😋 

After months of practice, Deb Uncle finally perfected his Mooli paratha. His mother, despite her Bengali purist tendencies, reluctantly admitted that it was "not bad" (which, in Bengali mom language, meant it was amazing).

Years later, as the rains poured outside, Deb Uncle sat with his own kids, flipping perfectly round Mooli parathas on the tawa, while outside, yet another uncle slipped at the building entrance.

"Eita toh Kolkata monsoon r tradition hoye gelo!" (This has become a Kolkata monsoon tradition!) he chuckled, serving up hot parathas, his greatest achievement in life.