A slice of nostalgia

Call it a summer ritual, or whatever you may like, but making papad was an absolute must in many Indian traditional households. For generations, families engaged in this exercise and followed age-old recipes some of which were treasured family secrets. 

Of course, the papad-making crowd is much less now because when you can buy readymade papad from grocery stores who wants to make? But nothing can replace the charm of making papad at home and the joy of relishing it. 

Radhika Desai, a homemaker, says, “Making papads is a childhood memory that is so refreshing to relive.” She says that in most Indian homes, making papad used to be an annual ritual. “I remember how right after my exams during the summer vacations, my mother and grandmother would make an entire week’s plan on how to execute the papad making process,” recalls the 70 year old. 

Ask her what was the best part of the ritual and she says with a mischievous smile, “Eating the raw dough while the elders were looking away.”

“Making papad was more like a celebration, because all the women of the household would come together to have a gala time, gossip and joke,” says another homemaker Prajakta Jadhav, adding that along with the regular papad her mother would keep some aam papads to dry which Jadhav would conveniently steal and share them with her friends in the neighbourhood.

With evolving tastes, people have been experimenting with flavours as well. So besides dal,  sabudana and aloo papad, there are several other varieties like kurdai, hing, nachni, palak, rice and what not. 

Some may think that papad is simple to make, but Jadhav says it requires a lot of effort to soak, knead the dough and dry the ingredients under the sun to get the right kind of crunchiness. “Though it may seem easy, but getting that perfect texture and shape, and then storing it carefully in airtight containers need hard work. I remember how my mother would give us instructions and would be disappointed if the individual dough balls wouldn’t be a perfect round,” says Jadhav.

Reema Limbad, a papad seller from Pune who runs the potato papad brand, Pratato, says nothing can ever replace the good old papad because of its nostalgic value. “Papads take several people back to their childhood homes — well connected people and huge terraces. Due to space constraints in today’s apartments and also paucity of time, people generally don’t make papad at home nowadays. However, if you ask them about their memories of papad, they can go on and on,” she says.  

Ask her how she got into papad making business and Limbad says that she started Pratato after her father passed away. “Initially, I started with the idea to give my mother something to look forward to, but the response that we got was tremendous,” she says adding that the reason behind its success is its nostalgic value. 

“My mother would make jaaliwali wafers and papads, which were rationed because of the extra effort it took to prepare them. During school vacations, my cousins would come over to our place and we all had the duty of drying and guarding the wafers. However, we used to end up eating half of the boiled wafers. I am sure others too must be indulging in this kind of mischief.” 

But that is the whole fun of making papad. It is a celebration, which brings the family together.