Anaya stood over her granite countertop kneading a ball of pale dough with her small, wrinkled hands. Next to her was large-eyed Sophia, unable to reach the counter, but eager to learn.
It had been 72 years since she last began making made chapati, but her life was beginning to end and Sophia had requested it. Anaya looked closely at her wrinkled finger, which was once embellished with a thin gold band. She remembered the rain that night; it glowed while they danced and shimmered as he asked for her hand.
“What are you thinking about, awa Anaya?” Sophia asked.
“Just your grandfather …” Anaya responded, her Indian accent pronounced. “Here’s some dough you can begin flattening.”
Sophia scribbled the recipe onto a sheet in her wide-ruled school notebook, knowing that one day she would be flattening dough next to her own children and grandchildren. She began pressing the balls of dough into disks as her awa instructed.
As Anaya sprinkled her round chapati dough with caraway seeds and prepared them for baking, she remembered her family and friends walking into her new house, the air filled with congratulations and the smell of seeded bread. She remembers standing with her own mother, kneading dough on a flour-sprinkled counter.
“And then your mother came into our lives,” Anaya said, breaking the momentary silence. Sophia raised her eyebrows in confusion, however, she did not ask any questions. Even though she was only nine, she understood that her awa was getting older and was sometimes unaware of her words. The two of them placed the trays gently into the warm oven, then sat at the wooden kitchen table.
As Sophia and her grandmother waited, their eyes wandered around the room until Anaya began to speak once more. “You remind me of your mother. She too has sharp blue eyes. They always seemed to hold curiosity. She was a curious child just like you.”
“Did you ever teach her the chapati recipe?” Sophia asked.
“Avashei, of course I did. I even remember when she prepared it for the first time without me.” For the second time that day, Anaya remembered her daughter’s marriage and first home, making her feel even older.
When it was time, Anaya took the steaming chapati out of the oven.
“And now we have you.” Sophia’s curious eyes widened as she smiled and thanked her awa for teaching her something so special. She twisted the old, brass door handle and walked to her house.
Fifteen years later Sophia opens her artwork-covered refrigerator to collect the eggs for her grandmother’s chapati recipe. She unfolds a sheet of wide-ruled school paper, studies it, and cracks three eggs into a bowl with her four-year-old daughter standing next to her.