Once Upon A Chapati

By Michelle Ami Reyes

Isa’s body lurched forward, a tremble of thick ink-black hair and wooden bangles. She gasped in the heat of the night as the air echoed with a thunderous clap. Streaks of lightning flashed across the sky, chasing away the memories of her dream.

Her eyes clenched shut, remembering the unholy creature’s hot breath on the nape of her neck. Her nerves pricked sharp, like the fires of a tandoori oven, as a ravenous growl breathed heavy in her ears. From the corner of her eye, she could see bared white fangs, the promise that the end was near. The wolf had caught her again, the way he did every night. It was the nightmare she couldn’t escape. When she awoke in the morning, there was only guilt. She had survived. But the others had not been so lucky. Chaya, Mahi, Priya. They’d all been taken. Lives ended before their time. Isa could only imagine in her dreams what these women had felt in their final moments.

Spluttering raindrops thrust themselves through the open window and pooled on the sandstone floor. She rubbed her aching temples and whispered into the empty room, “Why me? Why am I still alive?”

Her stomach rumbled; a reminder of days gone without food. Her cupboards had long sat empty, but she dared not go to the market. The villagers had shunned her. She was the right age; she had the right looks. She could hear it in their sneers when she walked among the wild thistles for berries and when she hung clothes out to dry on a line behind her family’s thatched hut. You should have been taken instead of our daughters. But she hadn’t. Perhaps I am undesirable, she had told herself once. But Isa knew the real reason the villagers scorned her. When the mudslide took her brother, Ansam, no one in the village wept. In grief, her Ma followed him. Isa had taken a shovel and buried the woman who had born her without wind or rain as companion. Bapu died shortly after that; his aging heart couldn’t bear the sorrow. Then the villagers began to hover, their glaring eyes searching for someone to blame. When they whispered behind her back, she knew the hollow of their words. Let the wolf eat you. Maybe then he will be satisfied.

The first rays of the morning sun peaked from behind soft white clouds, shooing away the night storm. The sky was golden and streaked with gray. Soft brown toes slid against the cold earth of the kitchen floor, mechanically moving through the hut. The fireplace crackled with fresh teak wood, scenting the room with memories of loved ones long gone. The bark’s spicy aroma reminded Isa of the laughter that once filled these walls. A small black pot hung on a bent metal hook over the flames, and thin brown lines ribboned out from floating tea leaves bubbling on the surface of the water. They formed the first hints of chai. The warmth and the drink were a welcome for visitors that never came. For seven years, nobody had wished Isa a “Shubh Savar” or come to gossip idly about village life. The only face she saw was the lifeless one that sat across her flat circular table. Mikh Mikh. Black button eyes and brown horsehair framed a happy face cut from a burlap sack.

“Shubh Savar, Mikh Mikh,” Isa said, a yawn escaping her lips. She descended into a lotus position at the table.

The words felt comical as they spilled from her mouth. She was intelligent enough to wonder if she was starting to go crazy, talking to a doll with a lop-sided stitch for a smile. But Ma had been adamant. In her final breath, she’d thrust the stuffed creature into Isa’s hands, her raspy voice heaving through cracked, decaying lips, “Protect this doll with your life. Do not show it to anyone. Talk to it daily and, when you lose your way, it will tell you what you need to do.” Then she was gone, and Isa had vowed to fulfill her mother’s dying wish.

“Ah, Mikh Mikh,” she continued, as if in mid-conversation with an old friend, “Eat up. I’ve made us a feast today! A stack of hot chapatis dripping with ghee. If you don’t eat fast enough, I’ll gobble them all up.”

Isa watched as sunlight mixed with the swirls of descending dust, landing on her barren table, and mocking her imagination. She held her breath, almost half expecting the doll to reply. No eyes but her own had ever fallen upon Mikh Mikh these past seven years. She had fulfilled her mother’s wish, but still the doll lay quiet, inanimate, a child’s toy. If the doll doesn’t start speaking soon, it’ll be too late. A single tear streaked down her caramel-colored cheek. She started to wonder how long a human could go without food. It’s better to starve than be eaten by wolves, she comforted herself.

“If it’s hot chapatis you want, say no more!”

The voice was sweet with a sing-song curl, like the words of a long-awaited loved one. Isa watched as Mikh Mikh stood up from the table and walked straight and life-like to the fireplace. A brown braid hung down its back, mixing with the cotton strands of a forest-shaded palu. The doll reminded Isa of her own Ma. In her later years, Ma wore saris the shade of green cardamom. “Green was always Ansam’s favorite color,” she said wistfully, her blistered hands flipping chapatis in a pan, communicating motherly affection through food. But it was easy to tell from the doll’s small frame, the feathers poking through its ovular arms, and its fingerless grip that this was no ghost reincarnated. It was a being of its own design, standing comfortably in her hut as if it had lived here for decades.

As the doll held a tawa over the flames, a song threaded its lips: “Pour and stir and knead and pound. That’s the way the chapati goes round!”

Slowly, bits of wheat flour, water, and salt appeared within the black metal pan. The ingredients spun and twirled like a Ghondol folk dance, frenzied energy forming first into balls of dough and then into flat, golden chapatis. Perfectly smooth and brown, their form rivaled the creations of Bhuri’s greatest chefs. Mikh Mikh slathered the flat bread in butter and tossed it onto a metal plate, and Isa salivated as puffs of delicious steam emanated from the small holes on the bread’s surface. The flaky crust burned warm and comforting down her throat. The butter caressed her tongue with a slippery touch, lingering long after the chapatis were devoured and whispering to her very core, “all shall be well.”

“Eat up, Isa. You need your strength,” the doll said before sitting down again at the table, the life disappearing behind her plastic button eyes.

They carried on in this way for months. Each morning, Mikh Mikh made chapatis, and the grief poured out of Isa. She felt hurt and angry, betrayed and confused. She cursed the hate of the villagers and the evil that had killed her friends. She spoke of her own fear of the wolf, her nightmares manifesting in shaking hands that made hot chai dribble punishingly down her thin fingers. The village never cared how the women felt. “Be brave. Follow the rules. Stick to the path,” the village master’s voice boomed over cries of despair, a shredded yellow sari tinged in red hanging from his left hand. What he really meant was, “Don’t show fear. Pretend the threat doesn’t exist.” But Isa didn’t have to pretend with Mikh Mikh. Isa had more to say, of how she felt sad and lonely, how she saw herself as unworthy to have survived. She reminisced about the girls now gone, and how much she missed her parents’ embrace. The doll nodded and listened, fed Isa, and then turned inanimate again. Isa’s tongue wagged and her teeth chewed, telling the whole of her life in bite-sized stories. She spoke and ate and spoke some more until, one day, she had no more to say.

“Mikh mikh,” Isa said one day, “I want to kill the wolf.”

She stood by the doll’s side, slathering ghee on chapatis as they slid off the tawa. Calloused fingers ignored the heat of the bread, a protective layer of deadened skin showing its strength. Isa had grown stronger in other ways too. Her arms moved quick and steady now, the lethargy of grief chased away by the bonds of friendship. A resolve to live had been forged in fire and wheat. It felt good to have something to look forward to again each morning. Though she still became sad when she thought of her family. They were never coming back. She had come to accept that.

The wolf is just a creature, she said to herself, licking up the last crumbs of bread, it will haunt me no more. 

It had come like a phantom, taking girls as they collected water from the well or while they plucked wild onion roots or gathered wood from the forest’s edge. Priya’s body was never found; only a severed finger marked Mahi’s disappearance. When one of the village children found it, it looked as large as a potato, swollen from being submerged in the river and ready to burst. The wolf howled with the wind that rustled through the trees and roared when clouds angry with thunder hovered in skies of gray. The more Isa’s nightmares faded away, the more she began to tell herself, “The wolf’s terror must come to an end. Why not by me?”

“Put on your mother’s crimson cloak,” Mikh Mikh replied. The words emanated from straight threaded lips, monotone, like they were having a conversation about the weather and not about what to wear when slaying a monster.

Isa could feel the perspiration on her brow. Chaya, Mahi, Priya, I will avenge you. The cloak felt heavy on her shoulders, reminding her that it had been made for someone else. She would carry her mother with her, the rough cotton fibers against her skin reminding her of her mother’s tough love, her strength, and the way she had always believed in her. Isa knew she wasn’t a fighter. She was a cook, a maker of chai and chapatis. How exactly did someone slay a wolf anyways?

When she asked the doll, it replied, “Leave that to me.”

The sun beat down on Isa as she walked through the village, its warmth felt foreign against her face. How long has it been since I’ve walked among my own people? She could hear the buzz even before the half-eaten body of a young girl came into view. Grotesque black flies with thin green wings swarmed above the body. The village master held a screaming mother in his arms, stopping her from scooping up the remains of her daughter.

Sarkuja’s Feet, Isa moaned words like a prayer to the Ancient One. The doll sat heavy in the pocket of her red cloak, rubbing against the white cloth of her salwar kameez. Isa straightened her back and held her head high. But she also knew what she looked like to the people of Bhuri – blood and death. The scapegoat for their pain.

“Shame!” a woman’s shrill voice shouted, a sharpened nail pointing straight at her.

The thick grubby hands of the butcher tightened around Isa’s right shoulder, shooting pain down her arm. “You shouldn’t be here,” his hot breath bristled against her ear.

“Tie her up!” A man shouted, pulling out a rope. Isa looked him in the eyes. He had the contorted expression of a grief-stricken father, “We can feed her to the wolf ourselves!”

“Protect our daughters!” the cry went forth as multiple hands grabbed her neck, her chest, her belly, pushing her to the ground. Fists and feet unleashed revenge’s fury on her body. Isa’s knees scraped the hard earth, pain reverberating down her legs.

“Run!” came the voice of the doll in her pocket.

Isa took advantage of the frenzy. She crawled through the mob, eventually escaping her captors, and fled toward a fortress of tall trees. The heat of the day followed her, its rays piercing like arrows through the gaps in the wood’s canopy, blinding her in a burst of white. The angry villagers stopped where the thin grass of their homes met the long shadows of Thorn Forest. They did not dare walk the halls of untamed nature. The village master’s tales paralyzed them with fear. In a thicket of bramble and branches, Isa watched as they turned back, convinced that she would die, and her death would bring an end to their misery. Then she turned and ran some more, stomping on fallen branches, their thwacks echoing against a tangle of moss and waxy green leaves. She clawed manically against the rough tawny barks of teak trees, letting the slivers pierce her soft skin, spraying shreds of brown and white in her wake. I’m here, wolf. Come and find me.

The forest was unending, looming over everything, silent and spiteful in their green reverie. Boughs as thick as pythons reached toward her face, slashing her arms, and grasping at her neck. Thick roots jutted out of hard brown earth, and Isa tripped, stubbing her bare toes on a twisted wooden loop. But she picked herself back up and mustered the energy to keep going. Even as the howl of the wolf echoed in the distance, she ran swifter, her feet pawing the ground like a tiger in mid-stride. Her hazel eyes were as bright as amber. Little did the wolf know that the hunted had become the hunter.

Isa came around a bend in the forest and entered a clearing. The rushing waves of the Sikar River cut across a small field of matted green grass, an otherworldly scream emitting from deep below its surface and piercing her ears and eyes and fingers. It was the call of the huntress. She felt it in the pricking of her nerves, and the way her heartbeat pulsed to the tune of the rocking trees. A power ancient and true coursed through her veins, awakened now in her moment of need. It was like a song she’d heard as a child, echoing faintly but with a familiar tune, giving her the courage to fight, to protect, to survive. Isa closed her eyes and inhaled a fresh spray of air and wild fur. The wolf was close now. She could feel him.

“Mikh Mikh,” she whispered over quiet stifled breaths, “What now?”

“Grab the chapati,” the doll whispered back, “Rip it up.”

Dirtied fingers slid along the velvety smooth texture of the cloak. She felt inside the depths of her pocket and pulled out a round bread, heavy and hard. It was blackened in parts, marks of carelessness, of being left in the tawa too long. Had Mikh Mikh made this? Isa wrinkled her nose at the smoky smell, its pungency wafting toward her as she shredded the bread. The pieces crusted in her hands, flaking like ash. Breaking bread didn’t feel like the way a huntress prepares for slaying a wolf, but Isa didn’t dare question Mikh Mikh’s directions. She trusted the doll with her life.

A red mouth, dripping with hunger, lurked from the shadows of the trees. A mangy white head as thick as a boulder swung from side to side, looming over four muscular legs. Sharp ivory fangs protruded from black lumpy gums, and a jagged scar hung low over a deadened eye. Isa knew him. It was the mark on his back, three streaks black and twisted. The ink oozed across the creature’s bristled hair, the mark of a Fur Bearer. Abomination. That’s what her father had once called the men of the forest, who hid in the shadows of the trees, and stripped the animals of their clothes. They hunted for sport, for the taste of raw flesh, and for the pleasure of watching a young thing writhe and die in their hands. Isa did not know how or why, but she was sure that the creature before her had once been a man. She stared back at it, the flint of blue in its eyes full of hate. She could see that, in its more primal form, the wolf had come to desire the taste of human flesh. Such was its curse, and it relished it. This wolf was the thief of young women’s breath, the master of the forest, and the abomination that the village had been unable to contain. Isa had come to end him.

“Cross the river!” Mikh Mikh shouted now, “and throw the pieces of the chapati behind you as you run.”

Isa turned toward the water with its pulsating blue waves. A line of wet, bumpy stones lay across it like the buttons down a man’s kurta. Isa realized the reason for Mikh Mikh’s directions. Traversing the river would not be easy, but it certainly would place the wolf at a disadvantage. Hopping from one stone to the other would be just as hard for an animal as it would be for her. If she ran too quickly across the stones, she’d slip and fall, and the wolf might catch her, but it was a risk she was willing to take.

Her long legs leapt over the bank, the gurgle of swift-moving water rushing beneath her feet. She could hear the growl of the wolf and the heavy pawing of thick earth. It was her nightmare all over again, of the wolf close on her heels, about to make his fatal blow. But she wasn’t afraid anymore. She danced from stone to stone, light as a feather, her toes finding their center and steadying her balance. With each leap, crumbles of blackened chapati released from her fingertips in quick rapid fire.

Mikh Mikh’s sing-song voice wafted from her cloak, a dirge on her lips: “Bread of life. Bread of death. Give and take away.”

Isa’s thick hair wisped across her face, forcing her eyes forward. One step in front of the other, flat, and sure. She did not look back. She did not stop. Not until she reached the other side, and her feet felt steady ground again. Only then did she hear the choke. There was a sputter and a cough, the sound of desperation, struggling for air. When she turned around, a mass of white lay splayed along two of the stones, half drowning in the arms of an unfeeling river. Water plummeted down its open jaw, as if it had been in mid-bite. Isa could see the metal shards jutting from behind its tongue and beneath the skin of its neck. The same bread that had given her life had been a feast of death for her attacker. The wolf was dead.

When Isa returned to the village, a child with a ball looked at her quizzically.

“Who are you?” he asked.

She walked in silence, the white tail of her dupatta trailing in the wind like a farewell gesture to the forest. She had left her mother’s crimson cloak behind. With blood-stained hands, she had untied it and let it slip down her body to wash away with the river. The villagers stared in silence as she marched to the center of the market, awe-struck and afraid. They did not recognize her.

“We are at your mercy, oh Great One,” the village master said, bending on one knee, “Please, tell us who you are.”

“I am Isa the White,” she said, soft eyes looking out at a sea of vulnerable faces, “Maker of Chapatis, Guardian of Bhuri, and Defender of Women. I have killed the wolf. Your village is safe.”

The men removed their caps, and the women cried into the sleeves of their saris. Silent prayers of thanksgiving wafted into the air. Their sorrows were over.

Isa smiled, sadly. They had hated her. They’d sent her into the forest, wishing her harm. No repair for Isa the Red, orphaned child of Ma and Bapu, sister to Ansam, she thought to herself, even as arms rich with blessings washed over her. They sang her name long into the night.

Once again, Isa stood in the warmth of her kitchen, her calloused fingers gripping a black tawa. The fire hummed in harmony with spiced chai, a song of courage and new mercies, to greet the morning. She was home and safe. Mikh Mikh sat on the shelf above rows of pots and pans, quiet, inanimate. The yellow mirrors on her green sari sparkled as the first rays of sun burst through the hut’s solitary window. “Well, Mikh Mikh,” Isa said with a smile, “Let’s make a feast today. A stack of hot chapatis dripping with ghee. If the villagers don’t arrive soon, I’ll gobble them all up myself.” Then she poured and stirred and kneaded and pounded until her chapatis were perfectly golden and round. The thin thread that ran across Mikh Mikh’s face curved upward, teasing a smile, but no words escaped its burlap mouth. It sat perched above the throngs that came and silently watched as they ate hot hot chapatis slathered in ghee that burned warm against their tongues and soothed their aching bellies. Isa’s chapati shop became renowned throughout all of Ori, and no woman ever went missing again.

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“Once Upon a Chapati” is a modern version of “Little Red Riding Hood.” In this tale, an Indian woman named Isa decides to bravely enter the woods at the edge of her village and confront the wolf that has been killing the village’s young women. I wanted to write a story that felt distinctly Indian, not only in the characters, clothing, and food, but in its themes, such as the way Isa navigates grief and healing, the elements of community, collective honor/shame, and the power of storytelling and food. Like the original tale, “Once Upon a Chapati” explores the anthropomorphic representation of man as wolf, the symbolism of the colors white and red, and the trope of the clever maiden, while also taking the narrative in new directions; directions, I hope, that reflect 21 st -century realities of predators, abused women, and tools for survival. The names and locations in this tale, such as the realm of Ori, the village, Bhuri, Fur Bearers, and Thorn Forest are my own creations. They echo what life could look like in a small village in India.

Michelle Ami Reyes

Michelle Ami Reyes, PhD, is an author and activist. Her first book, Becoming All Things, is the recipient of the 2022 ECPA award. Her second book, The Race-Wise Family, co-authored with Helen Lee, is a finalist in the Family & Marriage category for the 2022 Christianity Today book awards. Michelle writes at the intersection of multiculturalism, faith, and justice. She lives in Austin, Texas with her family. Visit MichelleAmiReyes.com and @michelleamireyes on Instagram for more information.