A Stack Of Hot Aloo Parathas Ready To Be Enjoyed By Family

When we talk of strong women, we often look for activists, leaders, celebrities, or spiritual leaders.

Today, I too shall talk about some strong women who have impacted me and my life, and you’ll be surprised to know that heroes don’t just wear capes; sometimes they wear sarees!

Let me first introduce you to the recipe and why I chose to make this. We are making what’s called an Aloo ka paratha-aaloo, which is potato, and paratha, which is a flat bread that is fried in a skillet or baked in a tandoor clay oven.

This paratha is the most frugal yet satisfying soul food for millions of people, especially from north India, primarily Punjab and also Pakistan. We have all traveled out of our home countries, and yet food is the last thing we let go of in our assimilation process.

Punjab, where my dad’s family heritage is, is the highest producer of wheat in the country, and their staple diet is roti or paratha, not so much rice.

Our grandmothers and their mother’s parathas are well known for being as humble as having salt and carom seeds to being complex with having potato, cauliflower, leftover dal, and daikon stuffing in it.

When India and Pakistan were divided, Punjab was split into two, and each country has its own Punjab. Cultures are very similar, the language is very similar, and so is the food. Even though Muslim Punjabis chose Pakistan and Hindu Punjabis chose India—parathas are the common love on both sides!

After partition, these women were trying to build their lives from scratch in an environment of uncertainty and financial hardships, but anyone that came to their home never left without a meal—these women knew what it felt like to be without food.

These are the women I’d like to honor in my article today—they had large families often with many kids and also very young brothers and sisters-in-law living with them that they are responsible to feed and clothe with the limited incomes of their sole breadwinner husbands, who are also trying to garner a foothold in a new nation, starting from scratch.

The aloo paratha to me is the most iconic symbol of my ancestors’ creativity, grit and perseverance to provide love and soulful bites to all their family and friends without vocalizing their hardships.

These were women of strength who rebuilt their lives and created a next generation of highly qualified doctors, engineers, civil servants and businessmen in the hope of a better tomorrow. Silence was their biggest weapon and the wisdom they acquired while living a frugal and humble life.

Their children moved up in life and many of them left their homes for better tomorrows-but their love for their mother and her sacrifices ran deep.

The food she lovingly prepared beckoned them to her humble home and she celebrated the blessings of her home full of laughter of her grandkids who would come n visit to enjoy parathas n grandmas love!

Always compassionate, truly worldly wise, these mothers of our society became the silent rock of Gibraltar who provided the men of the family the reassurance on the domestic front so they could go ahead and forge themselves and be good providers by re-establishing themselves.

My grandmother, Vidya Wati, who was the daughter of a rich barrister in Pakistan-who came to India with all her gold and ornaments and then traded them in bits and pieces for her husband’s brothers and sisters better future-for education, for their marriages etc. but never made a sound or showed any pain from being separated from her assets.

I didn’t fully understand the pain of an immigrant life as I had not seen anything firsthand-I was born in 1972 and partition had already happened in 1942

But when I had to leave India to settle in America in 1997, everyday I understood more deeply what migrating to a new country really meant!

Mind you, I had no language problem, no fear of financial crunch, and no death of loved ones in the mix, and yet it was hard to find a place under the sun in a new environment, so for my ancestors, my matriarchs, it would have been a million times harder.

So I’m writing this article (teaching this class) to keep their stories alive and to give you a taste of deliciousness-when nothing goes right, the fact that we have a home, a hot plate of food and someone who actually cooked it with love, we are rich! HOME IS WHERE THE MOM IS!