Hot chapati dunked into a cup of sweet, milky tea is a breakfast many Maharashtrians have grown up eating. And yet, when mapping the culinary landscape of the state, this is a dish that falls through the cracks. Pradnya Waghule explores the complicated history of chaha-chapati.

Chaha-Chapati. Piping hot chapati dunked into sweet, milky tea. A breakfast staple in Maharashtra. And yet, when mapping the culinary landscape of the state, this is a dish that is conspicuously absent. Except, it is teeming with life in the minds and hearts of a majority of the state’s populace, its taste lingering in their mouths.

“That the breakfast I had every single day of my life for 17 years was suddenly unmentionable as I moved to Pune, was something that troubled me for many years,” says Akshay Mahananda, one of the founders of Pune’s Chaha-Chapati café. As a student from Solapur, Mahananda found the big city alienating. “There is already an inferiority complex to contend with when you move from a small town to a place such as Pune,” he said. The foreign food is an added adjustment.

The word ‘foreign’ might not sit easily with foods such as pohe, upma, idli and dosa, the most accessible breakfasts in India’s metropolitan cities. But if something is far removed from your everyday life, what is it if not foreign? To be faced with a reality that does not account for your experiences—and to be told that it is the only reality that exists—is an act of erasure. Marginalised groups have to deal with this erasure in every aspect of culture, not least of which is food.  

Eating chapati for breakfast is a universal phenomenon, wheat or millet, says Saee Koranne-Khandekar, who has authored books on Marathi food (Pangat), and on bread-making techniques for the Indian landscape, in Indian kitchens (Crumbs). Chapati isn’t restricted to any particular community. While wheat itself is largely a post-Green-Revolution staple in the middle-class Indian household, she says, roti and chai are common in North India as well as in some parts of Bengal, where it is called Cha-Ruti. In testament to this commonality is the gush of responses to Olympic gold medalist Neeraj Chopra’s recent tweet, where he posted a picture of him enjoying Chai and Roti. Many of users appreciated his simplicity, and saw this as evidence of his ‘desi’ roots.

The Rise of Chaha-Chapati

However, Indians were introduced to the concept of breakfast only with the advent of the British, according to food historian Mohsina Mukadam, who has studied not only the transformation of food culture under the British but also the culture of tea-drinking in India. In fact, our everyday, non-negotiable cup of tea is a British inheritance too. So how did some of us end up marrying the British legacy of tea, with a cereal that entered our meals only a few decades ago, for a meal which is itself a recent invention?

According to Mukadam, Chaha-Chapati became a common breakfast as chapati used to be made anyway for tiffin boxes in most homes in Maharashtra. Sometimes, there’d be leftover chapati. The only thing you’d have to make quickly in the morning was tea. “But this is a breakfast that is more common among bahujans, not upper classes,” according to her. Brahmans might prefer what is called Phodnichi Poli: leftover chapati, tempered with a choice of spices and other aromatics. However, this is by no means a test, Mukadam says. Chaha-Chapati is a matter of preference, not caste. It just happens to be less common among brahmans, and more common among bahujans.

Apart from convenience, what explains the popularity of this meal is its satiety value. This satiety value is what makes it a particularly ‘sensible’ choice for those engaged in hard labour; people without a set routine or a dedicated lunch hour. If this happens to be the first meal of the day, 2-3 chapatis and chai are enough to keep one going even if lunch is late, or missed altogether.

The Casteification of Chaha-Chapati

That Chaha-Chapati is everywhere but not spoken about is can be explained both by its ubiquity and its low social status. Prestige is often conferred upon foods of the upper castes and upper classes. So if in western societies, Asians have spoken about the lunchbox moment, where they had to face ridicule at worst, and disapproval at best, for their ‘gross and smelly’ home-cooked lunches; there is a local equivalent to that phenomenon. Try opening a garlic-heavy meal in a Brahmanical office space and watch what happens. The foods of the most powerful sections of society are framed as desirable, good, and pure.

Is It Healthy?

But while Chaha-Chapati might seem like the food of the hardy, is it healthy? Modern nutrition will say this meal is incomplete — it has no protein. It has very little in terms of nutrients. Traditional wisdom might say this is a meal that will induce acidity. All of this has definitely made a dent in the image of this dish, which is another reason it is being dropped from the breakfast table in Marathi homes, where it was once common. As people gain access to more resources and wealth, Chaha-Chapati is replaced for healthier and more aspirational choices such as sandwiches, thalipeeth, oats or muesli.

Moreover, as Mukadam observes, with women increasingly working outside homes too, the task of making chapatis might take a backseat. “Making chapatis is tedious. Given a choice, women will only make as many chapatis as is necessary.” Also, with smaller families, it is possible to make a greater variety of foods at home, says Koranne-Khandekar as she traces the popularity of this combination to the logistical ease of cooking for a large family. It used to be a more practical choice for the women folk who had many mouths to feed.

Mahananda, however, has a broader outlook. When someone is constrained for resources, they choose what is most easily available. For the common folk in a village, if the choice is Chaha-Chapati, it is because it is affordable and healthy. Or what comes closest to being healthy while also being affordable. This logic is reminiscent of the language used by proponents of Intuitive Eating. Intuitive eating is an approach to food that has gained steady popularity over the last few years with the recognition of ideas of body-positivity. It emphasizes that health includes not only physical but also mental well-being. And that body weight is not a reliable indicator of health status. Food can nourish both body and mind; it can offer comfort that is necessary for wellbeing.

The Pull Of Simple Food

And that’s exactly what Chaha-Chapati does for a lot of people, whether or not it continues to be an everyday meal. Mahananda tells me about a regular at the cafe: “He felt so comfortable at our café, simply because someone like him, was offering him food he was used to — he even ate the Chaha-Chapati the way he used to eat it at home — churun, by tearing the chapati into small pieces, dunking it into the tea all at once, and slurping that comforting mush.”

And that’s what familiar food does. It gives you the freedom to go back to your roots. It tells you it is okay to occupy space. It tells you it is okay to be who you are, whether or not your food is given room in public spaces.

Banner image credit Sobmremesa 

Pradnya Waghule is a freelance writer and teacher. Her interests include food, culture and politics. And of late, Peppa Pig. 

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