A Case of Excess Rotis

My family suffers from a case of excess rotis. Our household, like every other desi household, holds roti at the highest pedestal. It is not only a vital and significant part of our daily diet, but is also believed to gain divine powers if it gets left over. Growing up, we were constantly bombarded with unsolicited reminders of how eating leftover rotis would make us ten times more powerful. It is the Red Bull of the desi diet. Turns out, it was just an excuse for our moms to make us eat that one extra roti they couldn’t get the adults of the house to eat at the dinner table the previous night.

In our house, we like to blame everything that goes wrong on the amount of the extra rotis that we produce. Stubbed a toe? It is because you threw away a leftover roti. Lost a job, it’s because you have been producing one leftover roti every Tuesday. A piece of crockery breaks, it’s because we are inching towards a dangerously high number of leftover rotis . Roti is the universal desi unit of measuring the misfortune that could fall upon you. In a way, it is the desi version of Murphy’s law: “Everything that could go wrong will go wrong if you have amassed an offensive quantity of leftover rotis.”

You must wonder, aren’t there countless ways to repurpose a roti that didn’t get eaten on the dinner table: e.g., feed it to the birds, give it to the homeless and hungry. Well, the case of excess rotis is not as simple. Allow me to explain.

By the grace of God, or some terrible miscalculation on our part, we happen to live in a rather privileged area of the city. The homeless or less fortunate send a huge panic upon being seen within the walls of our society. Women start gathering their young into their bosom, and men start speaking in an awkwardly thick Punjabi accent, they beat their chests, and remind the oblivious intruder that they know everyone in the police department or the government. So, as luck would have it, no less fortunate, homeless, or hungry person has ever shown up on our doorstep asking to be fed.

This leaves us at a complete loss for what to do with the insane amount of excess rotis that we produce. If I am lucky, I can sometimes catch the garbage truck man and hand it over to him, who then sells it to a kabaar wala or feeds it to his livestock. However, it doesn’t concern me what he does with it; I want the curse of the excess rotis taken away from me.

My mother-in-law keeps blaming me for making rotis that I am not even remotely interested in making. I keep asking everyone in the house to finish their roti. And if God forbid, I dare make one less, the house erupts into chaos, leaving everyone in desperate need of having one more. Consequently, the one extra roti I make for dinner rots in the hotpot for three days, eventually being taken away by the garbage truck man. 

This farewell to the leftover rotis comes at a cost; in fact, it is a whole process with five full stages of grief. And we go through them every single time.

First, the roti is completely ignored by every member of the house at the dinner table. Each of us refuses to acknowledge its existence to the best of our abilities. We take turns asking each other if there’s excess roti in the hotpot and if any of us would be willing to finish it. Not a single soul acknowledges it.

While getting up from the dinner table, the patriarchs of the house dart furious questioning and disappointed looks at my mother-in-law and me. These intensely disappointed looks get completely disregarded by her as she shows an honest intention of having me put the roti away in the freezer. I would never commit such an atrocity because I know that none of us would eat a roti from the freezer. The men float away towards their bedrooms, angrily mumbling about the saintly benefits of baasi (stale) roti. The roti then gets wrapped in a kitchen towel and put away in the hot-pot with love, where it rots for three days: more of its kin joins it there.

During these three days and immediately after, I get flickering outbursts about having to throw away so many rotis. The sinking feeling I get every time I catch sight of it doesn’t get soothed in the slightest. My anger becomes progressively contagious. Soon, we all start seeing the unimaginable calamities befalling our household, and we make sure to remind each other that our wastefulness is about to devastate us.

After three days, my mother-in-law casually prods through the hotpot and pretends to be surprised at the sheer number of rotis we have amassed. She then proceeds to blame me for making one too many. I remind her that I only make them on demand. She then suggests that it can be used by churning it into some weird version of kebabs with veggies. The leftover kebabs are a deadlier curse, so I remind her that no one ate them the last time. She then asks, visibly hurt and in utter disbelief, whether I plan on throwing it away? I call upon every thread of calm and patience in me and explain to her that giving it away to the garbage truck man is not quite the same thing. She then walks away loudly asking God for forgiveness.

Acceptance sets in, and the roti ends up with the garbage truck man, and I end up in resentment as I get bombarded with incessant reminders that everything going wrong in the house is because of us being wasteful of rotis. And with that, we come full circle.

This cycle repeats itself every day in our house. The case of excess rotis is consuming us slowly. Moving to a less privileged area where kabbar walas or beggars will be readily available to eat leftover rotis is not an option for my family.

Not having the backup of one extra roti at dinner is also not an option. Consequently, I am expected to eat that extra roti to redeem my actions. I am sensitive to gluten and don’t eat roti at all. So here we are: a household so conveniently and eternally divided by that one leftover roti.

 Maria, is a part-time writer and a full-time mother from Pakistan. Her writings have appeared in tasavvurnama, TWS publications and elsewhere. Her works can be found on her Instagram at @sullenchaos