I grew up in a small flat in a quiet locality in Indore. We had no dining table so we would sit on a carpet, laying out a plastic sheet on which to eat our meals. Every day, as I hurried to catch the school bus, I would have the same breakfast waiting for me: the previous night’s chapati, shallow fried in ghee.

It was a quick fix my mother had fashioned and decided to stick to permanently. She would make extra chapatis every night so that the leftovers could be used for breakfast the next morning.

On an iron pan, she would heat spoonfuls of home-made ghee and then put the chapati down on it, turning it ever so often to ensure that it was evenly fried. As I tore a piece off to eat it, the golden-brown chapati would be crisp, dripping ghee. And I could never eat more than one.

Soon, my father learnt to make the perfect ghee-fried chapati even better than my mother.

This was my breakfast for my entire life in Indore.

When I moved to Mumbai and began to live with friends, the change in breakfast was welcome: every day our cook would make something new– sandwiches, parathas, sabudana khichdi, poha or upma.

Then Covid-19...

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