The Curious Case of the “diamond” Chappathi

"Ding"! My WhatsApp chimed. The time was about 7 PM and I eagerly looked to open the app to see who the message was from. It was the menu for the next day.

As has become my practice, while I am here to help my mom in Nananani, I have been eating the meals that they serve here. Wholesome, carb-loaded, vegetarian, and yes rich with vegetables.

I have often smiled and acknowledged this funny quote to be true,

“Who knew that the hardest part of being an adult is figuring out what to cook for dinner every single night for the rest of your life?”

I always marvel at those who can decide these things days in advance!

So, it was with curiosity, I would scan through the menu to see what meals were planned for the next day! Today there was a surprise item listed for dinner. It simply said Diamond Chappathi; I had never heard of this dish before!

They have served chapatis before (they have called it by many names: Roti, Phulka, Chappathi) but I had never heard of the Diamond Chappathi. I assumed that this was a code-word that all of the other residents knew of, and I chalked this up to me being the odd-one-out.

This felt like a good old Hardy Boys or a Nancy Drew mystery to solve!

Turns out, I wasn’t the only one who didn’t know what a Diamond Chappathi was! The other residents had not heard of this either, because when we gathered for breakfast the next morning, there were jokes by the other residents! One claimed, “Maybe they will serve us each a diamond, in the middle of the chappathi”, which drew a raucous round of laughter from the crowd.

For this retirement community of primarily Tambrams in the outskirts of Coimbatore,

a rice-based south Indian fare seems completely natural, perfectly bland, comforting, and appetizing! But because a smaller percentage of the residents have relocated here from cities in the north, (Mumbai, Delhi, etc.), where they went for their careers and in search of fortune, their palettes have been exposed to a more North Indian fare and they miss a good “Chole Bhatura”, or a “chapatti bhaji”, and you will hear some people wistfully talk about the good old days. To which there will be chagrined comebacks, “Then why don’t you live there, instead of coming back here to the south?” ; There will always be one wise one, who will say, “I would rather the cooks here not attempt these north Indian dishes, because they will botch it completely and make it uneatable”. Well, I have certainly fallen prey to that!

And so it was, with bated breath that I waited to see what would show up with the evening meal!

Unfortunately, the outcome was quite a letdown! It turned out to be a paratha: three coned for sure and maybe with an askance look, maybe you could see four!

I could not picture how the three-cornered flatbread layered with butter, could evoke a diamond in the mind’s eye, but to look at it another way, maybe it is how the chefs have learned to deal with the conundrum, “What to cook for dinner?”; Lets’ just throw in an adjective or two, to a tried and true dish, and maybe it keeps the crowd looking forward to a new dish every day!