Grounded in wisdom

TRADITIONAL MINI FLOUR MILLS MAY NO LONGER BE IN VOGUE IN OUR HOMES, BUT THEY HELP PREPARE NUTRITIOUS FOOD

- VIBHA VARSHNEY

THIS IS a story from the times when each house had an atta chakki, or a flour mill. Grains like wheat, maize and pearl millet would be ground fresh each day and all women in the family would take part in this daily ritual to ensure that healthy rotis could be served to everyone.

While there are various types of traditional mills in different parts of the country, the chakki in my maternal grandmother’s house in a village near Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh, was made up of two flat, round grinding stones placed one on top of the other. This was fixed on a slightly raised platform in an airy but windowless room at the back of the house. The top stone had a rectangular piece of wood (galua) fixed at the centre in which a metal rod (attached to the stone at the bottom) was adjusted to provide the pivot for stones to move over each other. Grains would be poured from the top and a fancy wood-carved handle— placed on the top—was used to turn the top stone clockwise to make flour. Bigger the stone, faster would be the process and finer the flour. But the fact that it has to be turned by hand is a limiting factor. Usually the diametre of the stone is less than the length of a person’s arm. Two persons can sit facing each other and move the chakki handle together to ease the work. The processed atta falls off the lower stone into the bhir—a circular receptacle below the chakki, which is made of mud and coated with multani mitti (fuller’s earth).