The Parathas Story

Cruises Antarctica Cochin London and Parathas

I often went to Cochin to rustle business for the Cruises to Antartica... yes Antarctica... 

Strangely  Kerala contributed  80 percent of the passengers.. I had painstakingly grown this business from 10 passengers from India to 900 . That’s a lot.

Considering, you couldn’t Tavel to Antartica unless one was in the defence, geography or oceanography from India  a few years ago.

Also the Travelling spirit of Keralites I realised along with Bengalis , Gujaratis , Marwari and Jains is abnormally high.

Antartica the final frontier and cannot be reached by commercial aircraft either.

So my partner travel agents whom I met over Beef Chilli and Malabari Parothas..toddy, beer and lively Kerala meals of Meen Moillee and prawns...floated packages an year in advance ...

One of them was Viceroy travels ... owned by Sindhis..

But this story is not about Kerala, Antartica or Cruises or even Sindhis.. it’s about a humble aloo paratha I had today ..

So Viceroy travels also had a food packaging division which traditionally dealt with prawns and frozen food...

When I visited them as a good friend, (I had taken them for a cruise to Europe gratis), they would invite me for food tastings to their packaged food called something else earlier now called Buffet.

I was impressed with freshness and quality and back to Delhi I hunted and found some products, like the often ordered breaded fish fingers etc.

So one day talking to my Uncle in London in our weekly calls (he is undoubtedly my favorite Uncke), he said whenever my daughters come in to look them up during the Pandemic, I offer them Aloo , Gobhi parathas with Greek yogurt, they love it, ( the Greek yoghurt I can vouch for, when daughter and I visited last we loved it, we may have had the Parathas too).

So he winked (imaginary wink) and told me, he cheated and bought the Parathas off the Indian shelf in a large store at Greenford ( it wasn’t Tescos must have been some other). I said Ahaaann.

I kept thinking about it and one day I called my neighborhood store Greenchick (weird name but that’s another story) and asked for frozen stuffed Parathas, he said yes Buffet brand, ₹110 for 4 , I called for them as part of my list of other goodies.

Tried them this morning with regular yougurt preserves and paraphernalia... they hit the spot we liked them ... decent stuffing flavoring and crispness.

So here it is from Cruises , Antartica, Travel agents , to London to Parathas... an interesting slice okay bite of my life.