Mission Impossible!

That whole day I was in the kitchen. Didn’t know it would take me so long for such a simple task.
Some things which you see from your childhood, you start assuming they are very simple and easy to do. It’s like when you see your elder brother riding a bicycle or your dad fixing the bulb or your mom cooking. These are all simple day to day activities which anyone should be able to accomplish. But as they say, you can’t tell how deep the water is unless you put your foot into it.
I had just got married and was striving to achieve the ‘Best Wife’ title. Many of my friends had given me the advice that ‘Cooking’ is the best way to get to a man’s heart. Well, if that’s the key, I was determined to find it. My husband liked Chapatis a lot. I had managed cooking curries well in the past but this was a new battlefield for me. I was about to enter the arena of ‘making chapatis’.
It’s a very simple process, I believed. Buy the ‘Chapati Atta’ (Wheat flour). Mix it with the right amount of water and little oil/ghee to make a soft dough, roll it to make a round shaped chapati and then cook it on both sides on the pan. I knew it all. I had seen my mom and grandma making this at home number of times. I was very confident .If I could manage complex process of making curries then chapatis was a very simple affair for me.
On my first day of the mission, I prepared my dough for the chapatti quite well. I was surprised at my expertise. As I started rolling the chapatis, I realized that I had to make a lot of effort in rolling it. In spite of taking ten minutes to roll one chapati, I could not achieve the round shape. After about an hour’s efforts I convinced myself, the shape is not so important as the taste and that’s what matters. When I put my first chapati on the pan for cooking, I was expecting it to puff up as I had always seen it when my mom used to cook. Instead it just stayed flat and finally when turned on the other side it was so hard that I could use it as a hand-fan. I must have made some mistake in cooking it properly on the pan, I thought. So I tried another one .This was no different to the previous. And so, one by one all my chapattis turned into hand-fans. This was utterly disappointing. They say the food tastes better when you cook it yourself. But Alas! That wasn’t the case for me. That night we used the chapati as a replacement to spoons!!
From that day, I was more determined to master the task than before. It was my first failure in front of my husband. Although, he didn’t utter a single word of disappointment, I knew how much he would like to eat hot soft chapatis. Those days as a substitute we were eating readymade frozen chapatis that we get in market. They weren’t that bad but I couldn’t cope up with the idea that I CAN NOT MAKE A CHAPATI!
My logical mind started thinking and realized that there are many variables in the equation of making a chapatti. All the variables must have the right value to get the correct answer. Then I did the analysis of my first day experiment. Suddenly, I knew the answer! The dough that I had kneaded wasn’t of correct consistency to start off with. It should have been softer and so it could have also been easier to roll it and cook it. There you go; I was on my way to knead my new dough. This time I added more water and oil than before. After a lot of struggle with the sticky dough, I managed to get it more on the bowl than on my hand. When I started rolling out chapatti, it started sticking to the rolling pin. At the end of rolling, I could not pick it up from the platform. I had to remove all the dough and roll it into a new ball again. This happened many times for all the attempts. By the time I was rolling out my last chapatti the sun had decided to go down, bored of watching my futile efforts.
I still was very hopeful on my chapati .When I put my first chapati on the pan I was shocked to see the chapatis still hard like rock! I was so tired that I did not have the energy to even think what went wrong. I quickly heated the frozen chapattis for dinner and didn’t even let my husband know about my whole day’s wasted efforts.
Days went by but I hardly had any luck. I decided to change every variable in the equation to hit the right chords. The variables were; water, flour, oil, consistency of the dough, and heat. It was easy to surrender, easy to fall back on the readymade chapati option but more than ‘not able to eat fresh chapatis ‘the fact that I cannot make it was more frustrating. Chapati was like some goddess to me and her blessings were hard to earn.
The only option that always works when I am depressed or out of solution is to call my mom. I was so happy after talking to her, I knew the culprit this time- it was the flame of may gas. I was making chapati on a very low flame; scared that it might get burned but in fact it wasn’t even getting cooked.
I carried on my mission with new enthusiasm. By now I could make nice dough and roll round chapatis. My mom’s advice did help me, chapati’s were better but still not up to the mark.
Something was going wrong. Why was it happening only with me? When you try to achieve something desperately, you start taking all the reasoning personally. You start thinking, you are not good enough or something is going deliberately wrong only with you in the whole world!
One day while I was cooking lunch, suddenly I had enlightenment. I saw one important variable, I have been ignoring all this time while making chapati. It is the way you roll it. The rolling technique of the chapati is so important that it more or less decides the quality of it. You have to roll it in such a way that it is evenly levelled and not make it very thin or very fat.
I diverted all my efforts in this direction without forgetting the previous lessons and within no time the goddess finally gave me the blessings! I had earned it!
All this time, I had kept my husband in the dark about my mission. That night, in the dinner when I served him hot and soft chapattis, the look on his face made all my efforts worth. And then I knew, every goal cannot be achieved by just logic or by knowing the solutions. Practice and experience is the key to many solutions that you would otherwise not find.